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tained in these dark days by Nubar, the Armenian, and
by Riaz, the Jew. Riaz, who alternated in office with
Nubar, though of Jewish race was a typical representa-
tive, like his contemporary, Kami! Pasha, at Constanti-
nople, of the Turkish ruling class and of Moslem con-
servatism, He, like all Old Turks, got on well with the
British, but opposed them when he thought fit with an
astute obstinacy. He was, accordingly, eventually
dropped as too independent and undiplomatic, and was
replaced (1891) by an amiable Anglophil nonentity,
Mustapha Fehmy.
Cromerisrn having thus come into conflict with the two
typical representatives of the old ruling class, was now to
collide with the Khedivate, for Tewfik, our submissive
supporter, was to leave his friends in the lurch for the
last time. His death, in the prime of life (January, 1892),
brought to the Khedivate Abbas Hilmi, a boy of eighteen,
whose temperament and training tempted him to a trial of
strength with Cromer. And that such a conflict should
have occurred and taken the course it did is not the least
of our educational failures in Egypt.
Abbas was educated at Vienna as a compromise
between a British and a French schooling. Had he been
sent to France he would, no doubt, have come back
anti-British, but at least with such instruction and ideas
as would have made him a constitutional leader both of
the old and the new nationalism and one who might have
steadied the movement into Home Rule by stages. Had
he gone to an English school he would have come back
capable of co-operating with British Liberals to that end.
As it was, he acquired from the Hofburg an excessive
estimate of the power and position of princes. He tried to
take his stand on a shadow throne, and fell between two
stools.