In the summer of 1886, when all the troops had retreated to Wady Halfa and all the Soudan garrisons¹ had been massacred, the British people averted³ their eyes in shame and vexation from the valley of the Nile. A long succession of disasters had reached their disgraceful culmination⁴. The dramatic features added much to the bitterness and nothing to the grandeur⁵ of the tragedy. The cost was heavy. Besides the pain produced by the death of General Gordon, the heavy losses in officers and men, and the serious expenditure⁶ of public money, the nation smarted under failure and disappointment, and were, moreover, deeply sensible that they had been humiliated⁷ before the whole world. The situation in Egypt was scarcely more pleasing. The reforms initiated⁸ by the British Administrators⁹ had as yet only caused unpopularity. Baring's interference galled¹¹ the Khedive and his Ministers. Vincent's parsimony¹² excited contempt. Moncrieff's energy had convulsed the Irrigation Department. Wood's army was the laughing-stock of Europe. Among and beneath the rotten weeds and garbage of old systems and abuses the new seed was being sown. But England saw no signs of the crop; saw only the stubborn husbandmen begrimed with the dust and dirt, and herself hopelessly involved in the Egyptian muddle¹³: and so in utter weariness and disgust, stopping her ears to the

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