GENERAL GORDON.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 88, 7 February 1885, Page 4

GENERAL GORDON.

If Carlyle were alive, and were lecturing once more on heroes, under what head might he be expected to deal with General Gordon ? "The Hero as Divine" might be not altogether inappropriate, seeing that Gordon is a religious mystic, and has but recently published a volume of somewhat puzzling '•Reflections in Palestine." It may be doubted, however, whether to a mind like Carlyle's, existing circumstances would net suggest that " The Hero as Political Shuttle cock " would be the pioper title of a lecture which was to bo mainly occupied with the gallant defender of Khartoum A keeneyed, slightly-built man, rather under the middle height and a tittle more than fifty years of atre — an excitable, quick, nervous, plain speaking per-on, with very little repect for dignities, and supuib confidence in himself— such is the English Genoral who in the beginning of the year was despatched to Khartoum. He had been living at Jem salem, stud} ing the Holy ~epulchre, and fixing the <dte of the Crucifixion. He was? about to proceed to the Congo, at the instance of a small foreign potentate. The Government sends for him, and tells him to proceed to Khartoum. Shortly afterward.--a traveller meets him flying across the desert on a camel, far in advance of tho.-e who should have been theeompaniDnsof t»idangerous ride The whole ot England wat.-hed with breathless interest his dis sippe-mince into the desert; the entire English people gr -eted with acclaim the neWvS ut hus sale entry into Khartoum Certainly this was a thing without parallel, and not likely to be repeated, in history. The Government had placed its fortunes in j the hands ot one man, and, without soldiers without anything to compel submission, with nothing but personal character as a defence again-t treachery, had sent that man into a disturbed city in the centre ot East Africa, to negotiate with savage horde?, and to rescue cowardice from the rage of fanati^m. What man ever inspired greater confidence in himself than this ? General Gordon was probably thrust into his unique position less on account of his achievements than of his character. It is a character full of magnificent contradictions and daring eccentricities. He has at times a most scrupulous regard for human life : yet in China he followed Li Hung Chang about with a revolver, firmly resolved to slay him with his own hand, is re markable for a certain independent humility and carelersness of personal consideration ; but when King John of Abyssinia placed a chair for him at the foot of the throne, he shifted the chair to the Royal platform, and sat down beside the King At home in England he dresses with extreme plainness ; at Khartoum he made a more than Oriental display of purple and fine linen. Contemning self, he becomes angry at small slights ; frequently expressing disgust with the positions he has consented to fill, he is seldom prepared to relinquish them. In China he told his men that he should hand over his force to General Brown, but he continued to command it until the Taiping rebellion was crushed. When he was formerly Governor- General of the Soudan he wrote that hea9kedbod for three things. The first of these was, "Not to be disturbed if the Khedive send me away tomorrow ;" and the second was, *' Not to be disturbed if he keeps me." His disgust with everything is always a little weaker than his resolution to see the end of it. Often ruthless when circumstances seem to demand ruthlessness, General Gordon has a riature singularly compassionate and tender. To an officer who had betrayed his plans he said : " I will forgive you if you will lead the next forlorn-hope ;" and that officer died in his arras. He sent a gold medal, presented to him by the Emperor of China, to relieve the sufferers by Cotton Famine. During the quiet interval of his life at Gravesend he taught the boys in a ragged school, and laboured earnestly among the poor. His map of the world was dotted over with pins, this being the method of following the course of boys whom he had rescued from the gutter, <51othed, educated, and sent off to sea. His letters from the Soudan scarcely contained more about his own labours and fatigues than aboutstarving women whomhe had fed and children whom he had rescuod from death by hunger. Before l»e was sent to Khartoum it seems to have been ( a matter of discussion with him whether it were best to proceed to the Congo or see what oould be done for "Outcast London."

1 General Gordon has been compared to Cromwell. There is, however, little real similarity of nature. Where the two characters- appear to join is in an austere Puritanism, a certain regurdlestaiess of human life where great objects are to be gained, and an apparently fatalistic insensibility to danger. Gordon, in whom the spirit of the warrior frequently crushed down the cantion of the general, marched at the head of hia men, yet carried no more dangerous weapon than a slender cane. When there was a mutiny amoner his Chinese soldiers he seized the chief offender with hid own hands and led him out to be shot. Where punishment was to be inflicted his will wa9 never enfeebled by sentimental considerations of mercy, it •as been eaid of him that " he did not bear the sword of the Lord in vain " He impreswed the Asiatic and the Ethiopian mind by the celerity with which he hung oppressors and thieves ; he secured the faithfulness of his followers scarcely less through the relen'lessness of his punishment than by his evident devotion to their interests. There is a sort of probability in the story that is told of his manner of proceeding at Khar toum. It is said that he reads every morning in tin Bible If he should chance to turn to the New Testament he spends the remainder of the day in chanty and good works ; it hip reading falls among 14 Chronicles "or " Kings," he issues forth to harry and to slay. It is only to the Old Testament heroes that he can fitly be compared, unless one makes an exception of those stern and resolute Covenanters who were dragooned by Claverhouse on the Scottish hill-sides. With the Covenanters and the ' Id Testament heroes he share* the peculiarity of always feeling himself to be in the right. " Find me," he bay *, "the man— and I will take him as my help— who utterly despises money, name, glory, honour ; one who never wishes to see his home again ; one who looks to God as the sourse of good and controller of evil ; one who has a healthy body and energetic spirit, and one who looks on death as a relief from misery ; and if you cannot h'nd him, then lcve me alone." " The b-st servant I ever hid," he says, "is myself ; he always does what I like " His mind is of the He braic, not, a« Heine would have said, of the Hellenic r-aste ; but he has acted throughout life in the spirit of the Greek proverb : - '• The reward is in the race we run, not in | the prize." He thinks less of honours, less ' of emoluments leas of life itself, than of duty ; but then it is not his duty, as others pee it, but his duty as he sees it himself. He is impatient of official control ; he reqniies a free hand. He is a man to whom carte blanche should be given when no evil consequences can follow. Only, however, at such times, he is not content to regard himself as only one part of the game. He wiil not consider the whole problem, but only what seems the immediate duty. The complications which follow upon his habit of going beyond his advices <*eem to him the result of the blundering of others, not of his own reluctance to follow out a pre arranged plan He trusts much to a port of inppira tion ; and his inspirations are not always the same. To-day he would recogni.»e the Vl ad hi ; to-morrcv he would place a kingdom into the hands of his old enemy Zebehr So though it wa-» not intended that he should stay at Khartoum, and though he might long since have made good his retreat, it is necessary to fetch him home at a cost of millions of money, and, possibly, of hundreds of lives. With all his peculiarities, General Gordon is a true hero still. His defence of Khartoum has been more remarkable than General William's defence of Kara. However much he may have mistaken the woik he had to *10, the work which he has actually done will make a great chapter in the world's history. It is cer tain that as yet he does not consider it as nearly complete. General Wolseley is taking an expedition up the Nile to bring him home again. *' Christian heroes," says the Marquis of Hartington, te have some time* tempers like other men." Will he come?-SANCHO, "Weekly Echo."