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 of the interior, and gradually every other department, came to be reorganized, or, more correctly speaking, formed, under Lord Cromer’s carefully persistent direction, until it may be said to-day that the Egyptian administration can safely challenge comparison with that of any other state. In the meantime the rule of the mahdi and his successor, the khalifa, in the temporarily abandoned provinces of the Sudan, had been weakened by internal dissensions; the Italians from Massawa, the Belgians from the Congo State, and the French from their West African possessions, had gradually approached nearer to the valley of the Nile; and the moment had arrived at which Egypt must decide either to recover her position in the Sudan or allow the Upper Nile to fall into hands hostile to Great Britain and her position in Egypt. Lord Cromer was as quick to recognize the moment for action and to act as he had fifteen years earlier been prompt to recognize the necessity of abstention. In March-September 1896 the first advance was made to Dongola under the Sirdar, Sir Herbert (afterwards Lord) Kitchener; between July 1897 and April 1898 the advance was pushed forward to the Atbara; and on the 2nd of September 1898, the battle of Omdurman finally crushed the power of the khalifa and restored the Sudan to the rule of Egypt and Great Britain. In the negotiations which resulted in the Anglo-French Declaration of the 8th of April 1904, whereby France bound herself not to obstruct in any manner the action of Great Britain in Egypt and the Egyptian government acquired financial freedom, Lord Cromer took an active part. He also successfully guarded the interests of Egypt and Great Britain in 1906 when Turkey attempted by encroachments in the Sinai Peninsula to obtain a strategic position on the Suez Canal. To have effected all this in the face of the greatest difficulties—political, national and international—and at the same time to have raised the credit of the country from a condition of bankruptcy to an equality with that of the first European powers, entitles Lord Cromer to a very high place among the greatest administrators and statesmen that the British empire has produced. In April 1907, in consequence of the state of his health, he resigned office, having held the post of British agent in Egypt for twenty-four years. In July of the same year parliament granted £50,000 out of the public funds to Lord Cromer in recognition of his “eminent services” in Egypt. In 1908 he published, in two volumes, Modern Egypt, in which he gave an impartial narrative of events in Egypt and the Sudan since 1876, and dealt with the results to Egypt of the British occupation of the country. Lord Cromer also took part in the political controversies at home, joining himself to the free-trade wing of the Unionist party.

Lord Cromer married in 1876 Ethel Stanley, daughter of Sir Rowland Stanley Errington, eleventh baronet, but was left a widower with two sons in 1898; and in 1901 he married Lady Katherine Thynne, daughter of the 4th marquess of Bath.

CROMER, a watering-place in the northern parliamentary division of Norfolk, England, 139 m. N.E. by N. from London by the Great Eastern railway; served also by the Midland and Great Northern joint line. Pop. of urban district (1901) 3781. Standing on cliffs of considerable elevation, the town has repeatedly suffered from ravages of the sea. A wall and esplanade extend along the bottom of the cliffs, and there is a fine stretch of sandy beach. There is also a short pier. The church of St Peter and St Paul is Perpendicular (largely restored) with a lofty tower. On a site of three acres stands the convalescent home of the Norfolk and Norwich hospital. There is an excellent golf course. The herring, cod, lobster and crab fisheries are prosecuted. The village of Sheringham (pop. of urban district, 2359), lying to the west, is also frequented by visitors. A so-called Roman camp, on an elevation overlooking the sea, is actually a modern beacon.

 

CROMORNE, also CRUMHORNE (Ger. Krummhorn; Fr. tournebout), a wind instrument of wood in which a cylindrical column of air is set in vibration by a reed. The lower extremity is turned up in a half-circle, and from this peculiarity it has gained the French name tournebout. The reed of the cromorne, like that of the bassoon, is formed by a double tongue of cane adapted to the small end of a conical brass tube or crook, the large end fitting into the main bore of the instrument. It presents, however, this difference, that it is not, like that of the bassoon, in contact with the player’s lips, but is covered by a cap pierced in the upper part with a raised slit against which the performer’s lips rest, the air being forced through the opening into the cap and setting the reed in vibration. The reed itself is therefore not subject to the pressure of the lips. The compass of the instrument is in consequence limited to the simple fundamental sounds produced by the successive opening of the lateral holes. The length of the cromornes is inconsiderable in proportion to the deep sounds produced by them, which arises from the fact that these instruments, like all tubes of cylindrical bore provided with reeds, have the acoustic properties of the stopped pipes of an organ. That is to say, theoretically they require only half the length necessary for the open pipes of an organ or for conical tubes provided with reeds, to produce notes of the same pitch. Moreover, when, to obtain an harmonic, the column of air is divided, the cromorne will not give the octave, like the oboe and bassoon, but the twelfth, corresponding in this peculiarity with the clarinet and all stopped pipes or bourdons. In order, however, to obtain an harmonic on the cromorne, the cap would have to be discarded, for a reed only overblows to give the harmonic overtones when pressed by the lips. With the ordinary boring of eight lateral holes the cromorne possesses a limited compass of a ninth. Sometimes, however, deeper sounds are obtained by the addition of one or more keys. By its construction the cromorne is one of the oldest wind instruments; it is evidently derived from the Gr. aulos and the Roman tibia, which likewise consisted of a simple cylindrical pipe of which the air column was set in vibration, at first by a double reed, and, we have reason to believe, later by a single reed (see and ). The Phrygian aulos was sometimes curved (see Tib. ii. i. 85 Phrygio tibia curva sono; Virgil, Aen. xi. 737 curva choros indixit tibia Bacchi).

Notwithstanding the successive improvements that were introduced in the manufacture of wind instruments, the cromorne scarcely ever varied in the details of its construction. Such as we see it represented in the treatise by Virdung we find it again about the epoch of its disappearance. The cromornes existed as a complete family from the 15th century, consisting, according to Virdung, of four instruments; Praetorius cites five—the deep bass, the bass, the tenor or alto, the cantus or soprano and the high soprano, with compass as shown. A band, or, to use the expression of Praetorius, an “accort” of cromornes comprised 1 deep bass, 2 bass, 3 tenor, 2 cantus, 1 high soprano = 9.

Mersenne explains the construction of the cromorne, giving careful illustrations of the instrument with and without the cap. From him we learn that these instruments were made in England, where they were played in concert in sets of four, five and six. Their scheme of construction and especially the reed and cap is very similar to that of the chalumeau of the musette (see ), but its timbre is by