in area under equally adverse conditions has been accomplished by the improvement of the system of irrigation since 1877, principally the rearrangement and improvement of inlets from the Nile, which receive their water higher upstream, and consequently admit a greater volume of flood-water into the basins. It is not the deficiency of water in the river which is the cause of sharakee, but the impossibility of reaching the higher levels under the old and primitive system. In three years from this date, when the great dam at present under construction at Assouan is completed, the whole of the system of basin irrigation will be gradually given up, and a system of "canal "irrigation substituted, when 66 summer as well as "winter" crops will be grown, without the risk of winter crops being injuriously affected by a low Nile. This year the loss to Government of revenue from sharakee will amount to about £250,000, and the loss to cultivators double that amount. This, however, is not a serious matter when we consider the present financial prosperity of both the Government and the proprietors.

In Lower Egypt the basin irrigation has been entirely superseded by canal irrigation, and here the greater portion of the cotton crop is grown. This valuable crop has this year been saved from damage by the regulation of the great barrage below Cairo during

of

on account of the hitherto weak condition of the structure, and the fear that should any pressure be put upon it during high Nile it might not be able to withstand the strain. Fortunately last year the Egyptian Government began to strengthen the barrage by building down - stream a dam across each of the two branches of the river, thus keeping a body of water constantly pressing against the lower side the base of the structure, to balance an equal depth of water on the upper side. on the upper side. In this way the weight of water to be resisted is reduced when the doors of the barrage are let down to raise the head sufficiently high to force a flow of water into the irrigation canals. The dam on the Damietta branch of the Nile was last year so far completed that the engineers were warranted during the flood in regulating the flow of water through the barrage for the first time in its existence, and were consequently able to supply sufficient water to save the cotton crop. The construction of the dam on the Rosetta branch is now begun, so that before another season comes round perfect safety will be secured. In the light of these facts, it will be seen that Lower Egypt has hardly suffered, and that Upper Egypt, in comparison with other years of low Niles, has been little affected so far as 1899 is concerned; but, unfortunately, a low flood means a very much reduced supply of water in the follow

ing summer, at the very time when water is most required for the cotton crop. The cotton crop of Egypt in an average year is worth eleven millions sterling, and is by far the most important of all the summer crops. Next in value comes the sugar-cane cultures of Upper Egypt, and lastly the rice fields of the northern part of the Delta. In a normal year all available water is required, so there cannot possibly be enough in 1900 to save the whole of these crops. The question then arises, as to which crop must be given up in the coming season. This decision rests with the Egyptian Government, which reserves to itself ample powers, retaining full control of the entire watersupply. Rice, for many reasons, is the best crop to abandonfirst, because it is by far the least valuable, being grown only on poor, salt land unsuitable for cotton; and second, because it requires more than double the amount of water, applied more frequently. Consequently it is quite unable to withstand the long intervals of time which will be enforced between waterings. When there is a scarcity of water every canal is divided into sections, and each group of cultivators is only permitted to draw water in rotation every fifteen or twenty days. A twenty days' period will be a necessity next year. This will not injure the cotton crop much, but would ruin rice. will be sufficient to intimate in time that this rotation will be

It

put in force, and little or no rice will be planted.

Another measure will undoubtedly be adopted which will save much water for the cotton crop. More than onethird of the whole area of cultivated

land in Lower

Egypt is annually planted with maize. This land, which has previously been under winter crops, is dry and parched in the extreme, and when first flooded drinks in a large quantity of water. To obtain a maximum crop of maize the flooding of such dry land must be done just before the Nile rises, at the time when water is most required for cotton. This operation must be postponed in 1900 until the flood has risen sufficiently to relieve the situation, and by that means a great quantity of water will be made available for other purposes. The maize will be sown later; and though it will still have time to mature, it can only give a diminished yield. This will be unfortunate for the poorer classes, as maize is their staple food; but of two evils Egypt must choose the lesser. Should cotton be a failure, all classes of the community would suffer severely, and the land-tax, which amounts to one-third of the letting value, could not be paid. There is, however, little fear for the cotton crop of 1900, although Egypt will undoubtedly suffer considerable loss in her rice and maize.

S. WILLIAMSON WALLACE.

To those of us who praise the social life and tone of the eighteenth century, and who are apt to fall into comparisons irritating, it may be, to optimists and lovers of their own times, the reply is made that we take unfair examples. We take, it is said, our Walpoles and Selwyns and Charles Foxes, men who formed an exceptional clique, and represented nothing but an infinitesimal portion of the society surrounding them, and we contrast them with the average examples of a far wider community; whereas we ought to remember that the average life of the eighteenth century was very different, and that the fair counterparts of our examplesthe wits and statesmen and social heroes of our own daywould show an equal share of the qualities we admire. The latter half of this argument presents difficulties to the hardiest controversialist. If one knew the contemporary lions, one would hardly like to criticise their private merits and demerits, even as a body if one did not know them, it would be merely polite to accept the favourable account. No one, I am afraid, can deny that their public appearances are a trifle dreary, a little commonplace

and expected or So: if in private they make brilliant and fascinating amends, so much the better; we must be content to hear their praises without prejudice, and to return unobtrusively to their predecessors. As for the former half of the argument, it may be allowed that in the great mass of the commercial classes there was more of outward roughness and less of verbal education then than now. But that in the average of educated people of the upper class - I use the phrase phrase in the significance it had and has lost-there was an amount of social art and good breeding, of lively sympathy and sympathetic liveliness, of humour and intelligence, with which (to drop all comparisons) one would be well content to live, is proved conclusively by the books mentioned below. For granted that the first Lady Stanley of Alderley was exceptional woman and she was so only in the sense that she possessed ordinary good qualities in a strong degreethe same cannot be said of all her many correspondents, of her aunt and sister and girlfriends and father and stepmother. No; these are fair examples of an amiable family and society of the period, and

an

their letters prove once for all that it would have been well to live in it.

I think that the familiarity of the title I have given to this appreciation is not impertinent. To read Lady Stanley's letters with imagination and human sympathy is to take her for a sister, or at least an intimate friend. With the earlier Maria Holroyd, indeed, one fell frankly- and alas, how desperately!-in love. Now that one finds her married, a good housewife, a careful mother, a lady of position in the county of Cheshire, respect may mellow that pleasant infatuation into

a

warm affection: but affection at least one must be allowed to confess. And warm affection there is nothing faded about these letters of a lady who died in extreme old age half a century ago; the glowing vitality of their writer is strong in them still. Well, they are very intimate and have been published; one is invited to intimacy. And some humanity of response is appropriate, for great as their interest is for our knowledge of the time, its manner between relations, its fashions and domestic economy, and for instructive mention of important people and events, after all their great quality, that which makes them a possession in its way unique, is that they reveal a most winning and refreshing

woman.

The reader may be assumed, perhaps, to have read the earlier of the two books (and a reminder to read the other

at

once is the simple and pious purpose of these remarks), but some slight recapitulation may not be amiss. Maria Josepha Holroyd was the elder of the first Lord Sheffield's daughters by his first wife. He was an active politician, especially knowing about agriculture, a kindly, humorous, and accomplished man of the world. He was Gibbon's most intimate friend, and prepared his memoirs for publication. Miss Holroyd, then,-it was after her marriage that Lord Sheffield was made an earl,— saw a good deal of literary people of the respectable kind, and indulged her love of books under the guidance of the immortal historian himself. "What books do you read?" he wrote to her when she was twenty-one, "and how do you employ your time and your pen? Except some professed scholars, I have often observed that women in general read much more than men; but for want of a plan, a method, a fixed object, their reading is of little benefit to themselves or others: if you will inform me of the species of reading to which you have the most propensity, I shall be happy to contribute my share of action or assistance." Gibbon, as we know, had a great admiration for Fielding, and "Aunt and I read 'Tom Jones' by turns," wrote Maria. It was before the days of mockmodesty. She read in French, too, a rather miscellaneous collection: the works of Madame de Staël and Madame de Genlis and the affecting Rousseau.

Gibbon had a great opinion of her intellects. "Gibbon," wrote her father to her husband, "used to lament that she was not a boy, saying she would maintain a contest well with Charles Fox." A strong call was made on her practical sense and intelligence, for during several years, before his second marriage, she managed her father's house at Sheffield Place and in town. A charming young hostess she must have been, witty and appreciative of wit, good-humoured and something (by her own phrase and confession) of a flirt. Perhaps she was a little intolerant of sluggishness and dulness. She wrote, two years after her marriage, of her husband's school friend Colonel Campbell, "He is one of those sort of men who let time pass itself, and with whom I rejoice that it is not my lot to have to help them to pass it "-and her discreet aunt, "Serena," found in her a warmth and emphasis which needed control: probably it was as good fun to quarrel as to agree with her. Also she had her views of what a man should be. "You would make the Dof a Wife," wrote Serena, "to a man you could not look up to as high as a Steeple."

now

I do not find conclusive evidence in the letters published that a steeple was precisely the image in her mind of the fortunate man she married. She praised his virtues freely, but putting her strong love for him on one side, I fancy her real mental attitude was as towards a very amiable but rather negatively excellent

person, an attitude of goodhumoured understanding. But she was far from being the devil of a wife to him. A more comfortable and indulgent wife cannot be imagined. Cheerfully after their marriage she "followed the drum" with him, he being an ardent militiaman and England then agog at fears of invasion, though she detested the life; and later, because he loved the country and thought London a "Devil's Town," and wanted to be busy about his place, she cheerfully gave up the society which she loved, and in which she must have known she was eminently popular and successful. For us that self-sacrifice was a pity, because it has made us miss such a world of pleasant observation, but it was very agreeable for her husband, and perhaps in the long-run good for her. When they did go to town he collected eminent men of science, Davy and others, round him, on whose conversation Maria's keen intelligence battened, while her lively spirits, one cannot help fancying, were a little chilled: "dull, stoopid, scientific," you remember was Major Pendennis' verdict on such conversation. She even imbibed a little of her husband's Whiggery, tempered by her natural sense of humour and the slashing Toryism of her father, but one may not attribute this to her lacking independence, which in a due manner she asserted on occasion. In one of her very few letters to him, for they were always together, she wrote: "My poor dear man, I am very sorry for