The constant change of Turkish pashas has been markedly unfavourable to the progress and even to the prosperity of the country. No one vali ever seems to have effectually transmitted his mantle to his successor, and most of their administrations have left no other trace than plans never executed, and good intentions never acted upon. Every governor who did anything at all seems to have possessed a hobby, but, as no two of them ever worked on the same lines, no practical result ever came of their individual energy and intermittent activity. If possible, Tripoli, until very lately, presented even more strongly than Tunis the spectacle of a house divided against itself. Not only were the Arab tribes perpetually at war with each other under the combined influence of hereditary feuds and the institution of the _Soff_, but as a body they hated their Turkish rulers and co- religionists, just as much as the Turkish adherents of the Caramanlis disliked the intruders from Stamboul. The events of the past year have, however, materially and perceptibly affected this state of things, and the French invasion of Tunis has undoubtedly caused all local strife to be temporarily or permanently merged in a league, the common object of which seems to be the defence of Islam in general and of Tripoli in particular. The Arabs, who a short time ago were wont to complain bitterly of their Turkish masters, greeted the arrival of Nasif Pasha last May with intense enthusiasm, the Turkish troops were received with shouts of triumph, and as soon as the great siege guns were landed they received a baptism of blood from the sacrifice upon them of numerous sheep and oxen brought down to the shore by the Tripolitan townsfolk. No longer do the Bedouins of the interior murmur at their camels being taken for transport service; all they say is, “_Allah yunser es Sultan_”—“May God grant victory to the Sultan.” Sixteen days before Nasif Pasha’s arrival, M. Roustan had made the Bey of Tunis a French vassal by the Treaty of Kasr-es-Said. The feeling of Moslem antagonism, which was first roused by the French conquest of Algeria fifty years ago, was now re-awakened with renewed intensity, and the presence of Turkish troops in force was quite as necessary to prevent the extension of the movement among the Tunisian Arabs to their _confrères_ of Tripoli, as to assure the Tripolitans that Turkey would oppose by force any attack by France on the Pashalik itself. To have ignored or even neglected the state of public feeling in North Africa might have cost Abdul Hamid the Caliphate. But this is not all. Within the confines of Tripoli itself an _imperium in imperio_ has of late years been growing up, which will sooner or later attract the attention of Europe. In 1830, one Sidi Muhamed es Senoussi was living at Mustaghanem, in Algeria. He even then enjoyed a widespread reputation as a saint or _marabout_, and on the French invasion taking place he retired to Fez, in Morocco, where