f science and learning, after a wellnigh barren interval
of 1,100 years since the Arab conquest, was now developed and
illumined by the application of the arts with which in the dim past
she had enriched the life of barbarous Europe. The repayment of this
incalculable debt was due primarily to the enterprise of Bonaparte. It
is one of his many titles to fame and to the homage of posterity. How
poor by the side of this encyclopaedic genius are the gifts even of
his most brilliant foes! At that same time the Archduke Charles of
Austria was vegetating in inglorious ease on his estates. As for
Beaulieu and Wuermser, they had subsided into their native obscurity.
Nelson, after his recent triumph, persuading himself that "Bonaparte
had gone to the devil," was bending before the whims of a professional
beauty and the odious despotism of the worst Court in Europe. While
the admiral tarnished his fame on the Syren coast of Naples, his great
opponent bent all the resources of a fertile intellect to retrieve his
position, and even under the gloom of disaster threw a gleam of light
into the dark continent. While his adversaries were merely generals or
admirals, hampered by a stupid education and a narrow nationality,
Bonaparte had eagerly imbibed the new learning of his age and saw its
possible influence on the reorganization of society. He is not merely
a general. Even when he is scattering to the winds the proud chivalry
of the East, and is prescribing to Brueys his safest course of action,
he finds time vastly to expand the horizon of human knowledge.

Nor did he neglect Egyptian politics. He used a native council for
consultation and for the promulgation of his own ideas. Immediately
after his entry into Cairo he appointed nine sheikhs to form a divan,
or council, consulting daily on public order and the food-supplies of
the city. He next assembled a general divan for Egypt, and a smaller
council for each province, and asked their advice concerning the
administration of justice and the collection of taxes.[108] In its use
of oriental terminology, this scheme was undeniably clever; but
neither French, Arabs, nor Turks were deceived as to the real
government, which resided entirely in Bonaparte; and his skill in
reapportioning the imposts had some effect on the prosperity of the
land, enabling it to bear the drain of his constant requisitions. The
welfare of the new colony was also promoted by the foundation of a
mint and of an