“We all of us felt some six inches taller than before. We spread our tails like peacocks to the sun, and were as pleased as children at our soap-bubble, iridescent with many hues. But, all of a sudden, this beautiful vision melted away; the Egyptian mirage evaporated; the great political phantasmagoria faded like a dissolving view. There is nothing so delightful as magic, until, in an unhappy moment, the conjuror consents to reveal the apparatus to us by which our senses have been deluded, and shows us how it is done. Lord Derby is a great master of prose, and he has translated the Eastern romance into most pedestrian English. But the Foreign Secretary is a responsible statesman. He has widely warned us against ‘cant’ and against ‘rant,’ and he cannot afford to indulge in the exaggerated visions in which journalists may, with impunity, amuse themselves and their readers. It was not his affair to mystify England, but to reassure Europe; and therefore with that straightforwardness and common sense for which he is eminent, he told us at Edinburgh that the affair which had created so much sensation at home and abroad was not at all the sort of thing it had been represented to be; that, if it had been capable of the construction which had been put upon it, it would have been neither a wise nor a honest transaction. He repudiated with scorn the idea that England aspired to an Egyptian protectorate; they had not reversed their Eastern policy; still less had they contemplated to appropriate the territories of the Khedive as our share in a scramble for general plunder. What had really been accomplished was a very ordinary affair. The Khedive had certain shares in the Suez Canal. So far from being ambitious to get hold of them, Lord Derby would have much preferred that the ruler of Egypt should have kept them in his own hands; but, as he found himself obliged to part with them, the English Government thought it better to purchase them than to let them go elsewhere. They have acquired them, not to give England any special or predominant foreign influence, nor to secure any exclusive advantage, but to keep open a communication for the benefit of all, which to England is of supreme importance. And with these explanations, tendered on the good faith of an English Minister, upon the credit of which Lord Derby justly relies, he tells us that the European Powers are amply satisfied. And so the nine days’ wonder is over, the enchantment is at an end, the chariot of Cinderella relapses into its original pumpkins and mice. Since Lord Derby has so pitilessly dowsed with cold water the heated enthusiasm of visionary journalists, they have never ceased to weep and to wail over the ruins of their pet toy, which has collapsed like a pricked bladder or a broken drum. They beg us to believe that the Foreign Minister does not understand the meaning of his own acts, or the scope of his own policy; that, in spite of all his protestations