Nearly four months after what is being called January’s 'Tahrir Revolution,' Egypt remains a hopeful society, yet one increasingly confronting the reality that early enthusiastic expectations of change held by the youthful protestors must be tempered by realism— which is only another way of saying that structurally the 'ancien regime' retains too much influence in key institutions to be discarded overnight, regardless of the revolutionary druthers of many of the country’s young people.  While this may herald a period of disappointment for Egypt’s activists, it also bespeaks an element of hopefulness that the Revolution may have nudged Egypt into evolving more participatory politics while avoiding the large-scale bloodshed that has marked other areas caught up in the Arab Spring.  Taking a longer view of Egypt’s current post-revolutionary conditions, one finds grounds for guarded optimism that the country may yet find itself on the evolutionary path to a more just and equitable society.  This fall’s upcoming elections should provide a defining moment for more concrete appraisals of Egypt’s likely future.