waiting for a seat, and all his hope of a political career lay in the patronage of his political friends, Dilke and Chamberlain, so that he had practically no choice, if he was not to sacrifice his ambition, but to follow the lead Dilke gave him about Egyptian affairs. He was afterwards sorry for the evil he had done, and has never, I think, liked to recall to memory the part he then played. But without doubt his responsibility for bringing on the war was great. The whole of the Egyptian episode in Morley's "Life of Gladstone," it may be noticed, has been slurred over in a few pages. But history is history, and his mistake needs to be recorded.
This matter settled with Sanderson, Currie took me in to see Lord Granville, whom I did not as yet know, and another conversation followed. Lord Granville was a man of singularly urbane manners, and began by inquiries after my stud of Arab horses, paying me a number of polite compliments about them.
Then, turning to the subject of Egypt, he "informed me plump that he had certain knowledge that Arabi had been bought by Ismaïl, and that the whole thing in Egypt was an intrigue to restore the ex-Khedive!"
This was another of the preposterous stories that were being foisted on the Foreign Office and the public to prejudice opinion against the Egyptian cause. It had reached the Foreign Office, as far as I have been able to ascertain, in a despatch or private letter from Sir Augustus Paget, then British Ambassador at Rome, to whom the ex-Khedive appears to have boasted at Naples that he had "ce gaillard là," meaning Arabi, in his pocket.
It is hardly necessary to inquire what motive of the moment Ismaïl may have had for making this assertion, for his word was never of any value, while the whole tenor of Arabi's career proves it to have been the absolute reverse of fact. Arabi's attitude at the date in question was more