A worthier and more successful enterprise that the French engaged in was the opening of a public library in the district to the south of the town still known as the Nasrieh. Of this Gabarty, who is not sparing in his ridicule of the balloon, gives an enthusiastic description, and records with the most unstinted appreciation his sense of the high courtesy with which the French received all visitors. He himself went often, and tells us not only of the delight with which he enjoyed its wonders, but of the pleasure afforded by the welcome offered to all visitors, and especially to those who showed an interest in or knowledge of the sciences. For their inspection all the treasures of the place were freely produced, and all help given them to understand the object and worth of what they were shown. There were many things in the library that the Egyptian visitors could thoroughly appreciate--rare Oriental manuscripts, maps and atlases of all parts of the world, illustrated volumes, astronomical and other scientific diagrams and philological works. For all these, as well as for the French savants who so freely and liberally put their time and knowledge at the service of their guests, Gabarty has unstinted praise and admiration.
Even more successful than the library, from the popular point of view, was the laboratory that the French threw open to all comers. Popular science was then in its infancy. The chemistry of to-day was altogether unknown and undreamt of. Electricity was in its early babyhood, even the telegraph being yet to come. Steam was an unharnessed giant. Gas, photography, and a host of things that are now-a-days among the most commonplace of our surroundings were unknown, not only in Egypt but in Europe. And by the Nile, where art and science once flourished, the little knowledge that still survived was the inheritance and privilege of the Ulema, and was sadly cramped and debased by the false theology that had elevated religious pedantry above all other knowledge or desire. It is no wonder, therefore, that the French were able to astonish their guests beyond measure by showing them a host of those "experiments in natural science" that in our own boyhood days we delighted in when presented to us as the "magic of chemistry," such as the production of a solid by the mixing of two liquids. The marvels of electricity as then known were also displayed, and, as Gabarty says with his customary candour, "other wonders that intelligence like ours could neither understand nor explain."