neither food, nor wine, nor the pleasures of the theatre could tempt him, and he remained in a state of limpness until the natural buoyancy of his spirits asserted itself.  What a life!  How much better would it have been for this rich man had he trained himself to preserve General Gordon’s composure, even if he had bought that composure at the price of his whole colossal fortune!  Riches were useless to him, the sun failed to cheer him, and his end was in truth a release from one incessant torture.

Turn from this hare-hearted citizen, and think of our hero, the pride of England, the flower of the human race—­Charles Gordon.  With his exquisite simplicity, Gordon confesses in one of his letters that he used to feel frightened when he went under fire, for the superstitious dread of death had been grafted on his mind when he was young.  But he learned the fear of God and lost all other fear; he accustomed himself to the idea of parting with the world and its hopes and labours, and in all the long series of letters which he sent home from the Soudan during his period of rule we find him constantly speaking quietly, joyously about the event which carries horror to the hearts of weak men—­“My Master will lay me aside and use some other instrument when I have fulfilled His purpose.  I have no fear of death, for I know I shall exchange much weariness for perfect peace.”  So spoke the hero, the just and faithful Knight of God.  He was simple, with the simplicity of a flawless diamond; he was reverent, he was faithful even to the end, and he was incredibly dauntless.  Why?  Because he had faced the last great problem with all the force of his noble manhood, and the thought of his translation to another world woke in his gallant soul images of beauty and holiness.  Why should the meanest and most unlearned of us all not strive to follow in the footsteps of the hero?  Millions on millions have passed away, and they now know all things; the cessation of human life is as common and natural as the drawing of our breath; why then should we invest a natural, blessed, beautiful event with murky lines of wrath and dread?  The pitiful wretch who flaunts his braggart defiance before the eyes of men and shrieks his feeble contempt of the inevitable is worthy only of our quiet scorn; but the grateful soul that bows humbly to the stroke of fate and accepts death as thankfully as life is in all ways worthy of admiration and vivid respect.  We are prone to talk of our “rights,” and some of us have a very exalted idea of the range which those precious “rights” should cover.  One of our poets goes so far as to inquire in an amiable way, “What have we done to thee, O Death?” He insinuates that Death is very unkind to ply the abhorred shears over such nice, harmless creatures as we are.  Let us, for manhood’s sake, have done with puerility; let us recognise that our “rights” have no existence, and that we must perforce accept the burdens of life, labour, and death that are laid upon us.