always to send him out to find what new move the Russians were making”—­such was the testimony of one of his superior officers.  Of his subsequent duties in delimiting the new Bessarabian frontier and his miraculous career in China we cannot speak in detail.  By the consent of all, it was his soldierly spirit that helped to save that Empire from anarchy at the hands of the Taeping rebels, whose movement presented a strange medley of perverted Christianity, communism, and freebooting.  There it was that his magnetic influence over men first had free play.  Though he was only thirty years of age, his fine physique, dauntless daring, and the spirit of unquestionable authority that looked out from his kindly eyes, gained speedy control over the motley set of officers and the Chinese rank and file—­half of them ex-rebels—­that formed the nucleus of the “ever victorious army.”  What wonder that he was thenceforth known as “Chinese Gordon”?

In the years 1865-71, which he spent at Gravesend in supervising the construction of the new forts at the mouth of the river, the religious and philanthropic side of his character found free play.  His biographer, Mr. Hake, tells of his interest in the poor and suffering, and, above all, in friendless boys, who came to idolise his manly yet sympathetic nature.  Called thereafter by the Khedive to succeed Sir Samuel Baker in the Governorship of the Sudan, he grappled earnestly with the fearful difficulties that beset all who have attempted to put down the slave-trade in its chief seat of activity.  Later on he expressed the belief that “the Sudan is a useless possession, ever was so, ever will be so.”  These words, and certain episodes in his official career in India and in Cape Colony, revealed the weak side of a singularly noble nature.  Occasionally he was hasty and impulsive in his decisions, and the pride of his race would then flash forth.  During his cadetship at Woolwich he was rebuked for incompetence, and told that he would never make an officer.  At once he tore the epaulets from his shoulders and flung them at his superior’s feet.  A certain impatience of control characterised him throughout life.  No man was ever more chivalrous, more conscientious, more devoted, or abler in the management of inferiors; but his abilities lay rather in the direction of swift intuitions and prompt achievement than in sound judgment and plodding toil.  In short, his qualities were those of a knight-errant, not those of a statesman.  The imperious calls of conscience and of instinct endowed him with powers uniquely fitted to attract and enthral simple straightforward natures, and to sway orientals at his will.  But the empire of conscience, instinct, and will-power consorts but ill with those diplomatic gifts of effecting a timely compromise which go far to make for success in life.  This was at once the strength and the weakness of Gordon’s being.  In the midst of a blase, sceptical age, his personality stood forth, God-fearing as that of a Covenanter, romantic as that of a Coeur de Lion, tender as that of a Florence Nightingale.  In truth, it appealed to all that is most elemental in man.