of the British arms, by a judicious arrangement
designed to secure the neutrality of Afghanistan, interposed by
nature as a strong, all but insurmountable, barrier between India and
Central Asia. These transactions, the theme of sharp contention at
the time, were cast into the shade by events in which we were
concerned in Egypt, our newly acquired interests in the Suez Canal
making that country far more important to us than of yore. Its
condition was very wretched, its government at once feeble and
oppressive, and, despite the joint influence which France and England
had acquired in Egyptian councils, an armed rebellion broke out,
under the leadership of Arabi Pasha. France declining to act in this
emergency, the troops and fleet of England put down this revolt
single-handed; and in their successes the Queen's third son, Arthur,
Duke of Connaught, took his part, under the orders of Sir Garnet
(afterwards Lord) Wolseley. There were again rejoicings in Balmoral,
where the Queen, with her soldierly son's young wife beside her, was
preparing to receive another bride--Princess Helen of Waldeck, just
wedded to our youngest Prince, Leopold, Duke of Albany.

But this gleam of brightness was destined to be followed by darker
disaster far than that which seemed averted for the moment. A
mightier rebellion was arising in the Soudan, a vast tract of country
annexed by the ambition of Ismail, the former Khedive of Egypt, to be
ill governed by his officials and ravaged by the slave-trade. These
evils were checked for a few years by the strong hand of Charles
George Gordon, already famous through his achievements in China, and
invested with unlimited power by Ismail; but, that potentate being
overthrown, the great Englishman left his thankless post, no longer
tenable by him. Then it seemed that chaos had come again; and a bold
and keen, though probably hypocritical, dervish, self-styled the
_Mahdi_, or Mohammedan Messiah, was able to kindle new flames of
revolt, which burned with the quenchless fury of Oriental fanaticism.
His Arab and negro soldiers made short work of the poor Egyptian
fellaheen sent to fight them, though these were under the command of
Englishmen. The army led by Hicks Pasha utterly vanished in the
deserts, as that of Cambyses did of old. The army under Baker Pasha
did not, indeed, disappear in the same mysterious manner, but it too
was routed with great slaughter.

The English Government, willing to avoid the va