The brief account has delighted thousands of readers in Europe and America.  Perhaps it is because he is careless of the sympathy of men that Charles Gordon so readily wins it.  Before the first of the six parts into which the Journals were divided is finished, the reader has been won.  Henceforth he sees the world through Gordon’s eyes.  With him he scoffs at the diplomatists; despises the Government; becomes impatient—­ unreasonably, perhaps—­with a certain Major Kitchener in the Intelligence Branch, whose information miscarried or was not despatched; is wearied by the impracticable Shaiggia Irregulars; takes interest in the turkey-cock and his harem of four wives; laughs at the ‘black sluts’ seeing their faces for the first time in the mirror.  With him he trembles for the fate of the ‘poor little beast,’ the Husseinyeh, when she drifts stern foremost on the shoal, ‘a penny steamer under cannon fire’; day after day he gazes through the General’s powerful telescope from the palace roof down the long brown reaches of the river towards the rocks of the Shabluka Gorge, and longs for some sign of the relieving steamers; and when the end of the account is reached, no man of British birth can read the last words, ’Now mark this, if the Expeditionary Force—­and I ask for no more than two hundred men—­does not come within ten days, the town may fall; and I have done my best for the honour of our country.  Good-bye,’ without being thrilled with vain regrets and futile resolutions.  And then the account stops short.  Nor will the silence ever be broken.  The sixth instalment of the Journals was despatched on the 14th of December; and when it is finished the reader, separated suddenly from the pleasant companionship, experiences a feeling of loss and annoyance.  Imagination, long supported, is brushed aside by stern reality.  Henceforward Gordon’s perils were unrecorded.

I would select one episode only from the Journals as an example of the peculiarity and the sternness of Charles Gordon’s character—­his behaviour towards Slatin.  This Austrian officer had been Governor of Darfur with the rank in the Egyptian service of Bey.  For four years he had struggled vainly against the rebellion.  He had fought numerous engagements with varied success.  He had been several times wounded.  Throughout his province and even beyond its limits he bore the reputation of a brave and capable soldier.  The story of his life of suffering and adventure, written by himself, is widely known, and he is thought by those who have read it to be a man of feeling and of honour.  By those who enjoy his personal acquaintance this belief is unhesitatingly confirmed.  He had, however, committed an act which deprived him of Gordon’s sympathy and respect.  During the fighting in Darfur, after several defeats, his Mohammedan soldiers were discouraged and attributed their evil fortune to the fact that their commander was an infidel under the curse of the Almighty.  Slatin therefore proclaimed himself