78 Egypt
stringency had reduced these figures to a quarter.
Of this school attendance about half was supported as
well as educated, and the rest mostly got one meal. The
old conscription required to fill Mehemet All's schools
had given place to keen competition for education.
Youths clubbed together to maintain one of themselves
at school so that he might teach the rest at an evening
class. Which sudden awakening of the Egyptians to the
advantages of a European education had, of course,
some incongruous results. For the Egyptian mind is
rather receptive than ratiocinative. The formulas of
mathematics were got by rote as the magic charms of
the foreign wizards, and pupils learnt their French
grammar by heart as they learnt their Koran, without
acquiring any acquaintance with French. But, after all,
boys in British public schools were, at the same time,
learning their Euclid by heart and memorising Latin
elegiacs. Ismail himself took an active initiative. He not
only gave education a fair share in the Budget, but
endowed schools from his private property, founded a
national library with very valuable manuscripts and books
of his own, and sent all the princes to school.
There was also an instalment of political reform.
Mehemet Ali had made a step towards representative
institutions by strengthening the Medjliss or Assembly
of Notables and the Divan or Privy Council. The
Medjliss had been abolished by Abbas, but was now
revived by Ismail. True, it met only once a year to
approve an annual report from the Privy Council, which
it never criticised ; and election to it was only a formality
and often compulsory, the members being the village
sheikhs, and other notables. But it was none the less an
interesting native institution, that was to be given a
further development by Ismail just before his deposition*