detail, but the same vision turned elsewhere to fields where study and
sympathy played a devoted part, could not fail to see; though the
workman's craft, which made material the vision, might fail.

The reception given Donovan Pasha convinced me that neither the vision
nor the craftsmanship had wholly failed, whatever the degree of success
which had been reached. Anglo-Egyptians approved the book. Its pages
passed through the hands of an Englishman who had done over twenty years'
service in the British army in Egypt and in official positions in the
Egyptian administration, and I do not think that he made six corrections
in the whole three hundred pages. He had himself a great gift for both
music and painting; he was essentially exacting where any literature
touching Egypt was concerned; but I am glad to think that, whatever he
thought of the book as fiction, he did not find it necessary to grant
absolution as to the facts and the details of incidents in character and
life pourtrayed in Donovan Pasha.

Who the original of 'Donovan Pasha' was I shall never say, but he was
real. There is, however, in the House of Commons today a young and
active politician once in the Egyptian service, and who bears a most
striking resemblance to the purely imaginary portrait which Mr. Talbot
Kelly, the artist, drew of the Dicky Donovan of the book. This young
politician, with his experience in the diplomatic service, is in manner,
disposition, capacity, and in his neat, fine, and alert physical frame,
the very image of Dicky Donovan, as in my mind I perceived him; and when
I first saw him I was almost thunderstruck, because he was to me Dicky
Donovan come to life. There was nothing Dicky Donovan did or said or saw
or heard which had not its counterpart in actual things in Egypt. The
germ of most of the stories was got from things told me, or things that I
saw, heard of, or experienced in Egypt itself. The first story of the