MILITARY HEROES.

Press, Volume XLV, Issue 7157, 19 September 1888, Page 6

MILITARY HEROES.

ike interesting and imposing ceremony of unveiling the memorial windows to General Gordon, hero of Khartoum, to the officers and men of the Royal Engineers who were killed or died from their wounds or disease in the Egyptian and Soudan campaigns of 1881 to 1885, and to the officers who served and were killed in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, was performed in Rochester Cathedral on August 9th by General Viscount Wolseley, jn the presence of a crowded congregation of the principal officers and ladies of the garrison, ail the local clergy, the elite of the district, and a battalion of the Royal Engineers, besides a large body of the general public. The memorial consists of two tiers of windows erected in the South Transept. There is an inscription at the bottom of the windows, and it is intended to erect brasses with the names inscribed of all those who lost their Uvea in the several campaigns. Lord Wolseley, in asking Dean Hole to accept the windows on behalf of the Cathedral authorities, said as works of art he thought they were well worthy of taking their place in that splendid and ancient cathedral amongst the many monuments which already adorned the walls, and which told those who looked upon them the noble work done in the service of the Sovereign and their country. As they looked upon those monuments they brought home to them the remembrances of men who bad served the corps, and had left behind them exwell worthy of being imitated!, but neither in that cathedral nor in any church in the country was a name tabulated upon its walls more worthy of being remembered for ever by the people of the country, as well as the corps to which he belonged, than the name of General Charles George Gordon. He was a man whom he knew well—a man deToted to the service of his country, a real patriot in every sense of the word, but a man who not only served his earthly Sovereign, but never forgot the orders, and what he believed to be his duty towards his Maker. His strongest characteristics were modesty and gentleness, and he was a man who scorned ambition. When future generations came to worship within those sacred precincts, and looked cpon those windows, and saw the names recorded upon them, he hoped they might be inspired by the same feelings as those whose names were recorded. He could wish any future body of men no higher blessing than that they might follow the example of that noble man, that great soldier and Christian, General Gordon. Dean Hole said he took to his charge the memorial with very great respect for the brotherly and generous sympathy which bad placed it there, with an admiration of Its beauty as an adornment to the church, and with the most profound reverence for those heroes who, in the discharge of their duty, had been obedient unto death.