Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/568

564 honoured and respected at home and abroad. What do we find now? England a byword and a reproach among the nations! He inherited an Ireland, according to his own statement in Mid-Lothian, more prosperous and contented than at any previous period of her history. What is her condition now? and how will he leave her at the end of his misused and baleful power? He inherited "Peace with honour." The whole history of his rule has been one of wars, and one of them, at least, dishonourably terminated! He inherited Egypt quiet, if not prosperous, under a dual control, of which he himself spoke favourably until it suited his purpose to discredit it; and the story of his administration of that unhappy country will be a blot on the annals of England in history for ever. And so on ad infinitum! Any comparison between Lord Beaconsfield as a statesman and Mr Gladstone, recalls irresistibly the poet's lines, which would almost seem to have been prophetically written for the present crisis: –

"Oh for a man with head, heart, hand, Like some of the simple great ones gone For ever and ever by! One still strong man in a blatant land Who can rule and dare not lie."

No event of recent times has so deeply stirred the national feelings and the national conscience as the tragedy recently enacted at Khartoum. The movement for providing a worthy national memorial of Gordon – though somewhat suggestive of those who, in the Holy City of old, garnished the sepulchres of the prophets whom their fathers had killed – is only a natural outcome of the feelings of shame and contrition that Englishmen must always experience at the mention of his name. A marble statue would be but a commonplace memorial for the man whose life-work and character were both unique; and it is to be hoped that Gordon's effigy will not add one more to the many satires in bronze or stone which now disfigure our thoroughfares, and of which the most monstrous example has recently been removed from Hyde Park corner. Whatever may be done in addition, the one monument which the nation owes to the national hero is the establishment of a strong and beneficent Government over those "poor Soudanese" whom Gordon loved, and for whom he died; so that future travellers visiting Khartoum and asking for Gordon's monument might receive the reply, – "Behold it in the broken shackles of the slave, in these smiling fields, in this contented people. Si monumentum quæris, circumspice."

The military situation in the Soudan is somewhat as follows: The advanced columns of General Buller on the right, and of General Brackenbury on the left, have been respectively drawn back to Korti. Under the new conditions created by the fall of Khartoum, this course was inevitable. According to present intentions, Lord Wolseley's headquarters will be retired to Dongola, and his force will be echeloned along the river between Handak and Merawi, the latter place being held as an advanced post by the Mudir of Dongola's infantry, with probably the Black Watch, a troop of Hussars, and two guns. There is not the smallest ground for apprehension of any danger resulting to our troops from attacks by the Mahdi or others; indeed it would be unhoped-for luck if such attacks were made. But we confess great anxiety for the health of our soldiers throughout