The excellent Morley, in an enthusiastic paragraph describing the arrival of this new Ottoman deus ex machina, grows almost lyrical in his praise.
"The Egyptian crisis," he says, "has reached its culminating point, and at last it seems that there is a man at Cairo capable of controlling events. There is something very impressive in the calm immovable dignity of Dervish Pasha, who is emphatically the man of the situation. After all the shiftings and twistings of diplomatists and the pitiful exhibition of weakness on the part of the leading actors in this Egyptian drama, it is an immense relief to find one 'still strong man' who, by the mere force of his personal presence, can make every one bow to his will. Nothing can be more striking than his assertion of authority, and nothing more skilful than his casual reference to the massacre of the Mamelukes. Dervish is a man of iron, and Arabi may well quail before his eye. One saucy word, and his head would roll upon the carpet. Dervish is quite capable of 'manipulating' Arabi, not in the Western but in the Eastern sense of that word. In this strong resolute Ottoman it seems probable that the revolution in Egypt has found its master."
And again, 15th June: "The past career of Dervish Pasha is filled with incidents which sustain the impression of vigour he has laid down at Cairo. He is at once the most vigorous and unscrupulous of all the Generals of the Ottoman army. Although he is now seventy years old, his age has not weakened his energy or impaired his faculties. His will is still as iron as it was of old, and he is quite as capable of ordering a massacre of the Mamelukes as was Mehemet Ali himself.... His early military experience was acquired fighting the Montenegrins, who always regarded him as the most dangerous Commander whom they had had to meet. In one of the last acute fits of hostility (about 1856) between the Porte and Montenegro, Dervish penetrated to Grakovo, the northernmost canton of the Vladikate, as it then was; and the Voivode of the district, cut off from retreat to the South, took refuge in a cave, the habitual hiding-place of the people against sudden raids, it being so situated that the usual