The Sun.
London, England, 1857-04-20 00:00:00

COURT OF BANKRUPTCY.

Mr. Commissioner Goulburn was the Commissioner
of the day, but there was no case of the slightest in-
terest.

IN RE R. K. LANK.

In the matter of this bankrupt, who is a solicitor, and
extensively connected with bill discounting, it was origi-
nally intended by his Honour to give judgment to-day
on some disputed points, but the judgment was adjourn-
ed for hearing further arguments.

CITY SHERIFFS' COURT.
(Before Mr. Prendergast, Q.C.)
CALDWELL V. EXLEY.I

The plaintiff is a seed merchant, and defendant is in
the same business in Mark-lane, and the action was
brought to recover the sum of 381. 108. for a quantity of
winter tare seed, alleged to have been sold to the de-
fendant. The transaction occurred in September last,
and the plaintiff swore that defendant promised to pay
on the goods being delivered at the railway station, and
they were forwarded accordingly, but no delivery order
was tendered at the time, but afterwards an undated one
was offered, which defendant refused to take on that
ground. _ _ .

Mr. Buchanan called the defendant, and put in an
invoice, on which it was stated that the goods were to be
paid on the receipt of the delivery order, and defendant
said that through not receiving the delivery order in
September he had lost the contract and 6d. per bushel ;
he refused to take the order because the railway com-
pany would not have delivered to an undated order.
In examination by Mr. Mayhew, defendant admitted
that he had received a notice from the plaintiff that the
delivery order was lying at his agent's, and defendant
could have it on payment of the amount of the invoice,
but he had never applied.

Mr. Buchanan contended that a proper delivery ought
to have been tendered at the time of the sale, and that
defendant was not bound to go to an agent, but the
♦endor was bound to deliver it before he bad a claim.
The order was not, in fact, tendered at all till February,
which was too late for sowing the seed.
His Honour considered that the purchaser ought to
have gone and taken up the delivery, as he bad the op
portunity of selecting his own time and suiting his own
convenience. He must therefore give judgment for the
plaintiff.

EMIGRATION FROM THE NORTH OF SCOTLAND.—The
Spring fleet has just sailed for Canada from the north-
east coast of Scotland, carrying out 1,500 passengers.
They are chiefly agricultural labourers, and for the most
part young and newly-married people. Large sums of
money continue to be received from settlers in Upper
Canada who had previously gone out, chiefly from Aber-
deenshire, and there is every prospect that before many
years few agricultural labourers will be left at home.
Wages have risen, but when we state that the highest
rates do not exceed 201, a-year, it will not be thought
surprising.

GENERAL SIR CHARLES NAPIER.

The Life and Opinions of General Sir Charles
James Napier, G. C. B. By Lieutenant-General
Sir William Napier, K.C. B. In Four Volumes.
Vols. I. and 11. John Murray.
Had Tacitus been own brother of Scipio, and.
surv►ving him, written h s Biography—the result
could hardly have been more interesting than are
these enthralling Memorials of the Conqueror of
Scinde, penned by the classic historian of the Cam-
paigns of the Peninsula. This, in truth, is Charles
Napier's noblest and most enduring monument.
Here, in this eloquent and touching Narrative of
his Life—here, in these pages, glowing with the
warmth of fraternal love, radiant with the evidences
of chivalric genius, and luminous with the light
shining out of Great Deeds and Heroic Sentiments
—here, if anywhere discernible, is most assuredly
the "Memento" destined to convey to posterity
the fittest notion of all that was most memorable in
the Career and Actions of the Hero of Meeanee and
Hyderabad. A glorious history recorded in appro-
priate characters ! A Tribute to the Fame of the
last great Captain of England—in every particular
more solid, more massive, more substantial, than
the Bronze Statue and the Granite Pedestal, erected
in homage to his memory upon the most conspi- •
cuous site in the Capital of the Empire—a work of
art so far valuable and of importance, for inasmuch
as it will serve to attest to a remote epoch the un-
affected admiration with which this Dauntless Heart
was regarded by his own immediate cot:tempo-

It is impossible not to recognise everywhere
throughout these two introductory volumes of the
biography of Napier, the perfect and tender appre-
ciation of his character by his eminently congenial
biographer. The key-note of this appreciation is
struck in the very first sentence of the first para-
graph. " This," says Sir William Napier, in ac-
cents simple but thrilling, " This shall he the story
of a man who never tarnished his reputation by a
shameful deed : of one who subdued distant nations
by his valour, and then governed them so wisely,
that English rule was revered and loved where be-
fore it was feared and execrated." Adding, "For
thus nobly acting, the virulence of interested fac-
tion was loosed to do him wrong : honours were
withheld, and efforts made to depreciate his ex-
ploits by successive Governments nevertheless,
his fame has been accepted by the British people
as belonging to the glory of the nation." A mag-
nificent but sorrowful epitome of a brave life, this
is—with truth, alas, in every syllable! Attestations
of which have already been emblazoned in inde-
lible colours upon the scroll of the National History.
Read it—and then answer I They will tell you,
those redoubtable annals, in regard to this Great
Captain—Conqueror and Administrator—that
his Life has no one "damning blot" upon it, as
with so many of his renowned predecessors ! They
will say, Here, at least, there is no cause for ex-
tenuation in regard to the treatment of a Ney or
of a Carraccioli ! They will tell you, those annals
of England, when speaking of Napier, that Here
was one who carved out for his country with his
sword a new and vast dominion. One who en-
hanced the Oriental Empire of Great Britain by the
addition to it of 58,000 square miles of territory !
A Great Proconsul—victorious first in the field and
afterwards in the council chamber ! And whose
rewards for all this and for How much more ! were
—a star and a bit of ribbon, incessant obloquy and
spiteful depreciation ! It is very bitter and very
heart-galling, all this—but it is wholesome, never-
theless, that the truth, miserable though it be,
should be spoken right out, without fear and without
prevarication. And that Truth. What does it
aver ? It says, Here, in Charles Napier was a man
who deserved well of his country—one whom chi-
valrous 'monarchs in the grand old times would
have delighted to honour—a Hero and a States-
man—dauntless and magnanimous ! Yet , a man
who, for the most part, from first to last, was treated
as the very target of national Ingratitude—a butt
for every arrow of hatred, winged with calumny,
pointed with envy, barbed with spite, and poi-
soned with virulence ! A strange, sad tale
enough with all its glory—but one, alas ! too true
in everything relating to it thus sorrowfully. So
true that when the dauntless heart of the great
Soldier at last ceased to beat—there lay by his
conch, as the sole trophies of so much valour, of
such lofty Civism, and of so many and of such re-
splendent achievements—the Ribbon of the Bath
and the Sword of the Ameers ! The latter a spon-
taneoussgift to the Conqueror and Administrator of
Scinde from the gallant foes he bad vanquished—
a gift expressive at once of their love, of their
gratitude, and of their admiration ! Honour
to the great man's memory ! He should
have died not thus—but, ah ! how differently
Died more gloriously he could not for his own
heroic reputation. But he should have died at
least surrounded by nobler evidences of the recog-
nition of his great deeds by his fellow-citizens. He
should have died, if ever a soldier died, with the
truncheon of a Marshal in his hand ! He should
have died not simply a Grand Cross of the Bath,
but a Peer of the Realm an Earl, or at the very
least a Viscount—if only in consideration of his
having added the magnificent province of Scinde to
our vast oriental dominions ! Napoleon the Great,
with such a Paladin as Charles Napier, would have
given him his baton for Meeanee—would have made
him a Duke and a Viceroy for Hyderabad ! In-
stead of which, there was the paltry ribbon—there
was the presentation sword received from the
Ameers, once his enemies—lying by the noble sul-
dier's deathbed ! Remembering which, it may be
well here to epitomise, in contrast, some among
the principal events comprised within the span of
this one memorable existence—events (historical for
the most part) occurring during the interval which
elapsed between 1782—and-1852 : the former the
date of General Sir Charles James Napier's birth in
London ; the latter that of his death (in the 70th
year of his age) at Oaklauds, near Portsmouth.
It was on the 10th of August, 1782, that Charles
Napier was born at Whitehall—the eldest son of
the Honourable George Napier and Lady Sarah
Lennox, daughter of the second Duke of Rich-
mond. So that the Hero of Scinde, through his
mother, was great-great-grandson of King Charles
the Second While through his father he trac:d
his lineage back to the great Montrose, and,
as his brother wisely remarks, to the " still
greater" Inventor of Logarithms, Napier of
Merchistoun ! Glorious and aristocratic associa-
tions of consanguinity—enhanced by the remem-
brance that one of the sisters of Charles James
Napier's mother (Lady Caroline Lennox) was wife
to the first Lord Holland, and mother of Charles
James Fox ! Charles Fox, Charles Napier, and
the rest of that generation of first cousins, being
all sixth in descent from Henry the Fourth, of
France, as we have already remarked that they
were fifth in descent from Charles the Second,' of
England ! " Hence"—referring to this blending
together of the blood of the Gallic King and the
Scotch Mathematician, Sir William remarks, iu re-
gard to his dauntless brother—" the blood of the
white-plumed Beauvois commingled with that of
the heroic Highlander in his veins,. and
his arm was not less strong than theirs in battle !"
Educated by his father : in January, 1794—being
then scarcely twelve years of ago—Charles Napier
received a commission in the 33d Regiment. The
master passion of his life, an inordinate thirst for
Fame, had already revealed itself through sundry
curious manifestations. For example, while yet a
child, he exulted on finding that he was short
sighted—because a portrait of Frederick the Great
hanging in his father's room had " strange eyes"—
because the eyes of Alexander the Great were said
to be of a different colour—because he read in
Plutarch that Philip, and Sartorius, and Han-
nibal, were all one eyed ! " He even wished"
says Sir William, " to lose one cf his own,
as the token of a Great General [a child's
thought remember I)—unknowing, then, that none
of God's gifts can be lost with satisfaction." It is
curious to note a little further on (vol. i., p. 470)
how, in 1837, "while fretted in spirit, he was
oppressed by congestion of blood in the eyelid.,
causing a painful depression, and leading him to
fear the loss of sight, with poverty and an existence
at, once obscure and suffering." But this was in
his fifty-sixth year, and the period of which we have
previously spoken was the halcyon dawn of his life,
when the future warrior was scarcely escaped from
the freakish fancies and the lovely day-dreams of
childhood. He was then "demure and thought-
ful." He was remarkable for a " gentle and calm
demeanour." Mr. Sheridan offering, one day at the
Hotwells, Bristol, to " tip" him, according to old
schoolboy custom, but having the "'tip" courteously
declined—remarked, in surprise to the father,
" Your boy is a fine fellow, but very wonderful."
True words, Richard Brinsley—" very wonder-
ful !" Here, however, before we leave these days
of little more than babyhood—so strangely and so
strikingly characteristic—here let us note, in pass-
ing, one exquisite little baby anecdote of the Hero
of the Hereafter : " When be could but just speak,
hearing for the first time the caw of a single crow,
probably a melancholy one, which infancy could de-
tect, he stretched forth his little hands, and, weep-
ing, exclaimed with broken infantine accents, ' W hat
matta, poor bird ? what matta ?' " It was the same
noble heart that cried out afterwards in the days of
his Glory and of his Terror, when the flash of his
sword was as a gleam of lightning in the eyes oftho
Ameers, and when the warriors of Asia dubbed him,
in dread and amazement, " the Brother of the
Devil" it was the self-same voice, the same
noble heart, unchanged and unchangeable,
that cried aloud in anguish long years after-
wards upon the very morrow of one of his
ct
most heroic achievements—" Battle ! victory
Oh ! spirit-stirring words in the bosom of society ;

but to me, Oh, God ! how my heart rejects them.
That dreadful work of blood, sickening even t 3 look
on : not one feeling of joy or exultation entered
my head at Meeanee or Dubba ; all was agony ; I
can use no better word. I was glad we won, be-
cause better it was to have Beloochees slain than
Englishmen, and I well knew not one of us would
he spared if they succeeded ; to win was my work
for the day, and the least bloody thing to be done?
But with it came anxiety, pain of heart, d:sgust,
and a longing never to have quitted Colbridge, to
have passed my life in the round field and the devil's
acre, and under the dear yew trees on the terrace
amongst the sparrows : these were the feelings
which flushed in my head after the battles. Well,
we are born for war in this good world, and will'
make it while men have teeth and women have
tongues. But away with these feelings! let me go
to work, let me sink in harness, if so God pleases ;
he who flinches from work, in battle or out of it, is
a coward." Not for him, however, the life of calm
and quietude, the dolce far niente under "the dear
yew trees on the terrace amongst the sparrows !"
Half a century and more of glorious action and
chivalric deeds—this was the very different path-
way upon which Charles Napier adventured while
yet a stripling, when in 1798, as aide-de-camp to
Sir James Duff, he first took part in the service of
his country by participating in the terrible task of
the suppression of the Irish rebellion !

Sixteen ! He was no more than sixteen at that
period when his public career may be said to have
really commenced. What he looked like then, we
may comprehend at a glance, from the contemporary
miniature by W. H. Egleton, engraved as the
frontispiece to the first volume of these memorials.
A smooth, calm, gentle boyish face, as unlike as
could well be to the keen, fiery, impulsive, impas-
sioned, eagle visage of the grand old warrior as he
was in later times, familiar to our recollection.
Speaking of his brother's personal aspect, Sir Wil-
liam has curiously enough remarked (vol. i. p. 117)
that an extraordinary change became observable in
it in the twenty-seventh year of his age, namely, in
1809. "Up to this period," he says, "his counte-
nance had been very comely, yet grave and sedate;
his dark lustrous eyes, alone giving signs of the
fiery spirit within.
disregarded, and his manner became eager and
restless, with sudden spasmodic movements,
springing partly from his wounds, partly from ill-
health. This change of manner was a mark of
awakened genius : be had warred with and against
men of migityenergies,'and thus becoming conscious
of ability, his countenance acquired a peculiarly ve-
hement expression, and his resemblance to a chained
Eagle was universally remarked." Observe—the ex-
traordinary change iu his appearance, thus pictur-
esquely described and characterised, is attributed by
the biographer of Napier "partly to his wounds.
Hiswounds !—No wonder that they told upon him in
some way surprisingly, those terrible and tot easily
numerable cicatrices! For although he never lost
an eye, as Nelson did at Calvi, nor an arm as the
same glorious Victim of Victory did at Teneriffe—
Charles Napier was hardly less frightfully or less
frequently hacked and hewed in battle than even
the Conqueror of the Nile and Trafalgar. sub-
ject to accidents of all kinds in his youth,
he broke his leg, he nearly broke his
neck more than once, in the sports of boy-
hood. While, after his entrance into public life,
particularly, while serving in the Peninsular War,
the blows of the combatants seemed everywhere
as he went to concentrate upon his d:minutive
frame as the radii of a wheel at the axletree. Had he
worn a magic girdle about his waist—like the scarf
supposed, by his credulousfollowers, to have charmed
death from Ibrahim Pacha, the son of the Egyptian
Viceroy Mahomet Ali—he might have unwouud it
from his loins upon the evening of battle before enter-
ing his tent, as Ibrahim was wont to do in the pre-
sence of his troopers, and have shaken out of the foids
a shower of bullets ! Look at the straight to which
Napier was reduced, for example, towards the
close of the bloody conflict of Corunna, where the i
young Major had command of the 50th Regiment.
A musket ball struck him, bre akin; the outer bone
of his leg—he was pierced in the back by a bayo-
net—he had a sabre stroke on the skull—and was
about to be despatched when he was magnani-
mously saved by Guibert, a Drummer, and, almost
fainting, carried to the rear as a prisoner. That
final blow upon the skull was as the crash of Vul-
can's hammer on the head of Jupiter, whence issued,
fully armed, the Minerva of his wise and warlike
Genius : crowned with the invincible helmet, and
bearing in band the •resistless spear. From that
memorable day of Corinna, as we have already
seen, his very aspect and bearing betrayed a total
alteration—a change so apparent and startling as
almost to amount to a transformation. No longer
merely grave, sedate, and comely—his lineaments
thenceforth evidenced the flame and passion
of his impetuous spirit. From that time for-
ward he seemed, as it were, to bear in his
every feature the impress of his fiery genius—
he seemed to carry visibly upon his brow, in
his glance, in his movements, the sign manual of a
Hero and a Conqueror. Till—under the united
influence of Glory and Ingratitude, of Victory and
Vituperation—laden down with the laurels which
he reaped so lavishly, and with the calumnies with
which his enemies vainly endeavoured to over-
whelm his heroic capacity for endurance—he be-
came in appearance what we (all of us who knew
him) so well remember—the "Chained Eagle" to
the last ! Reverting, however, from the man
himself to his memorable sufferings and renowned
achievements—How (we may ask) are those suf-
ferings and achievements to be the most effectively
and yet, at the same time, the most sententiously
epitomised ? How By the simplest record of
names and dates—a very bede-roll of glory ! A
prisoner among the French—Napier was treated
with chivalrous consideration by Soult, one of
Napoleon's Paladins, Marshal of the Empire, and
Duke of Dalmatia. As soon as lie was sueielently
restored from his grievous bodily sufferings, the
young Major was allowed to return homewards on
parole. To return homewards as one born again
as by a miracle of resurrection ! For his name
had been returned among the list of the killed—
his friends were in mourning—his will was at
Doctors' Commons ! He got it back, of course,
immediately : amid afterwards, when the period of
parole had expired, got back himself betimes—to

the Peninsula. He was on the Coa fighting as a
volunteer. Fighting as desperately as ever : for
here two horses were shot under him—
and at Busaco he was shot through the
face 1 Recovered again from his wounds—he
was at the siege of Fuentes d'Onore, and made one
.also in the second and more memorable siege of
Badajoz. In 1812, when Napoleon the Great,
with the daring of Alexander, and the skill of Han-
nibal, and the forethought of Caesar, and the army
of Xerxes, was conquering Russia, and routing her
armies, and taking her capital—Charles Napier
was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.
In 1813—when the disaster of the Beresina was
forgotten in the double glory of Lutzen and Baut-
zen—the young Colonel was taking part in the ex-
pedition to the Chesapeake. Direct 'participation
in the crowning triumph of the Allied Arms
at Waterloo, he was denied by circumstances—ar-
riving upon the battle-field only upon the dawn of
the nineteenth ! Accompanying the British forces
to Paris as a volunteer, he subsequently had his
share in the storming of Cambray.
It is worthy of remark at the termination of that
War of the Giants—it is wonderfully worthy of re-
mark now that we are in the midst of the Anglo-

French Alliance, when Queeu Victoria has visited
the tomb of the Emperor Napoleon under the
dome of the Invalides—it is touchingly and impres-
sively worthy of remark What were the feelings of
OD British Soldiers in 1815 as described by—

whom ? By Thiers ? By Thibaudeau ? By Mon-
tholon ? No : but by Sir William Napier—our
o clapic historian of the Peninsular War ! And
described by him in his equally classic biography of
lii,sfamousbrother, Conqueror and Administrator of
Scinde. What are his words? Mark them—learn them

off by heart—note every syllable of them! He says—
"The feelings of the British soldiers [then in 1815]
were unequivocally shown. Proud oft heir long victo-
rious course against the French, they yet respected
the latter as brave enemies, and had a profound
admiration, even LOVE, for NAPOLEON, They
thought of him, not as a foe, but as a hero standing
alone ; a soldier to be hailed by all soldiers ; as a
man who had enabled them to gain the greatest pos-
sible glory by fighting hint : a master in war and
the fast friend of warriors." Magnificent words—
magnanimous, heroic, glorious words—the tribute
of a Preux Chevalier of the Pen as of the Sword !
Mark the anecdote which follows " When Louis
the Eighteenth entered Paris, the writer, his post
being at the bead of the picquets guarding the
Barrier of Saint Denis, was asked by the Captain
on duty there if he was to salute ?" [This is a his-
torical incident : and now, observe the sequel of
it !] c, I have no orders on that head, and give
none was the reply." [Nobly spoken, brave Sol-
dier and truthful Historian ! And now as Marcel-
lus says in Hamlet, " Mark what followed it !"]
Quoth Sir William (1., 267.)—c, The King came up,
crowds thronged forward, and the words vive and Roi
-were heard on all sides ; but the last was generally
preceded by the words l'Elnpereur et, pronounced in
a low tone. The British soldiers being left to them-
selvesbrought down their muskets from the shoulder,
and placing their hands on the muzzles fiercely re-
garded the approaching King. He seemed sur-
prised, but soon his countenance assumed a look
of such malignant ferocity, so fixed, so peculiar,
as never to be forgotten." Remember, English-
men—all this is from an eye-witness, and such an
eye-wimess Remember all this is from the hand
and heart and conscience of a British soldier, and
of all British soldiers from the one who is univer-
sally recognised as the annalist of 13ritisli Tictoziss

in the war of the Peninsula. Reading this, well
may we now exclaim in 1857, in the presence of
the Anglo-French alliance, that for Englishmen
hardly less than for Frenchmen, Waterloo has at
last, indeed, been gloriously avenged The con-
tinental wars for a time consummated—Europe
having her sword at length sheathed—Napoleon
conquered, banished, dead, buried in his island-
prison of St. Helena only to be disinterred after
the lapse of another generation, to the end that ho
migat be ultimately borne homewards and yet
more solemnly sepultured—how in the lull that fol-
lowed that great Storm, how, after that, fared Na-
pier, the young Colonel of the Peninsula ? A terse
synopsis of his life may (in answer to that suggestive
query) be thus readily compacted together :—Hav-
ing served upon the lonian staff for about a twelve-
month, Charles Napier, in 1824, was appointed
Lieutenant-Governor of Cephalonia. Fifteen years
afterward., in 1839, he was intrusted with the com-
mand of the Northern Military District of England.
So that Ihe who more than forty years previously
had taken a subordinate, but still responsible part
in the extinction of the Irish Rebellion, was now
called upon to take a conspicuous and most respon-
sible part in the military governance of Eng-
land during the suppression of the Chartist Insur-
rection ! Accomplishing his share, however, hap-
pily in the last mentioned achievement in the Cause
of Order by moral force rather than by physical
violence. Shortly afterwards, in 1841, he was ap-
pointed to the command of the Anglo-Indian army,
stationed in the Bombay Presidency. And in the
year afterwards, in 1842, was despatchedby the then
Governor-General, the Earl of Ellenborough, to
Scinde—where he was entrusted with the difficult
task of keeping open the jeopardised communications
between Generals English, Nott, and Pollock, at
that time advancing into Affghanistan. To say
that in this enterprise Sir Charles Napier had to
contend against an enormous disproportion of dif-
ficulties were to say nothing. How enormous
th, use difficulties were may be most strikingly illus-
trated by the simple record of his achievements—.
the achievements by which they were utterly dis-
sipated. Those achievements we may truly desig-
nate, in one wurd, magnificent. They in-
cluded among them the famous battle of Meeanee,
that memorable victory in which, with merely
2,600 men, Sir Charles Napier defeated and routed
an army of 35,000 Beloochees ! They were
crowned by the yet more memorable tri-
umph won by him soon afterwards at Hyde-
rabad—a triumph by which the power of the Ameers
of Scinde was at a single blow shattered to frag-
ments as by a thunderbolt. Nominated almost im-
mediately Governor of the new province, the victo-
rious General soon showed no less capacity than
daring and energy as an Administrator. He caused
canals to be dug, he turned the commerce of Scinde
into enisirly novel channels, he awakened in a
surprisingly short time the dormant industry of the
population. He abolished with a stroke of the pen
—slavery, the suttee, and the execrable practice of
infanticide I Dreaded first of all by the natives
as a bearer of the Sword of War, Sir Charles
Napier, as the bearer of the Sword of Justice, was
very soon regarded by the vanquished race
with love and veneration. The story of his
heroic Conquest has been told by his brother,
the annalist of our wars in the Peninsulas--as also
the no less notable narrative of his wise and mode-
rate Government. The subsequent events in our
hero's life are yet more vividly than those of 1842-
43 in the popular recollection. They are so, be-
cause in a historicl point of view they are but as
incidents of yesterday. Everybody remembers well
the anxiety, we may almost call it the actual panic,
awakened amongst us here at home by the first dis-
astrous intelligence of the Sikk campaign of 1849.
We have none of U 9 forgotten how the people then,
as it were with one voice, fixed upon the Hero of
Scinde as their destined Deliverer ! How the Iron
Duke him,elf emphatically endorsed the popular
mandate by replying, when asked to mention three
names among any of those he might recommend
for the command at that apparent crisis to her Ma-
jesty's Government—" Sir Charles Napier—Sir
Charles Napier—Sir Charles Napier I" And finally,
how, in obedience to the instinct of the nation,
and in answer to the deliberate recommendation
of the Duke of Wellington, the Government did
send Sir Charles Napier to assume the command of
our army in Hindostan at a crisis fraught, to all
appearance, with enormous difficulty, and with all
but overwhelming responsibility. When he arrived
in the Punjaub the war was over, as every body,
equally well remembers. But, as every body does
not remember as it ought to Le remembered in simple
justice and out of the commonest motives of gra-
titude, Sir Charles Napier signalised the com-
pa.rwively brief interval of his last command
over an English army, by vindicating in a re-
markable manner his character as a military
reformer—a military reformer daring and enlight-
ened ! In the winter of 1850-1851, he resigned
that eornmaud. And in 1852, to the grief of all
who knew him, and amidst the unavailing regrets
of every patriotic citizen of the empire, having a
heart uninfluenced by passion, and a judgment un-
warped by prejudice—he died, as we have said, at
his estate of Oaklands, near Portsmouth. Peace
to his manes. Honour to his memory. To that
memory he himself has 'secured an unfailing »c
petuation. His career will be cherished in the popu-
lar recollection because be made it a part of the
national story. His achievements will be borne in
mind, because, without exaggeration, they are, in
truth, among the greatest and the noblest of the
valiant deeds of Englishmen. To point the moral
of this memorable life, to adorn the tale of these
heroic actions, it is well that Charles Napier's bro-
ther of all men should have assumed the office of
his biographer. Nobly is that brother acquitting
himself of the duties deVolving upon him from that
self-imposed responsibility. So appropriately and so
judiciously is he doing this that we look forward.
with eager satisfaction to the prospective completion
by two more volumes, of a work which, in the first
and second, gives all the promise of a masterpiece.