MEN OF THE DAY. No. 146.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIR ALFRED HASTINGS HORSFORD, G.C.B.

THE son of a soldier, he was sent to Sandhurst, and at fifteen received a commission in the Army. He was a handsome boy, which made him popular with his comrades, and was soon found to be a hard-working and reliable officer, which rendered him a favourite with his superiors. He served in the Kaffir War, the Crimean War, and the Indian Mutiny, and did good service in Ireland during the Fenian movement. In all and every office of action he justified the estimate originally formed of him; in the field he showed himself a leader of men always full of readiness and resource; in administrative duties he gave evidence of sound judgment and fine tact. In the Crimea he had had some of the narrowest escapes ever recorded; in India he had brilliantly captured sixteen guns in one operation, and had been wounded; as commander of a battalion of his beloved Rifle Brigade, he had won the confidence of the men and the respect and affection of the officers. Wherefore, although without interest at head-quarters, his personal qualities soon caused him to be marked down as a man for superior employment. He was made first a Companion and then a Commander of the Bath, and in 1872 was placed in command of a military district. In 1874 he was made Military Secretary to the Commander-in-Chief; sent as the British delegate to the Brussels Conference on the Laws of War, he by his simple, well-judged conduct in that capacity materially contributed to the defeat of an astute scheme for protocolising all unconscripted nations out of their defences; and last year, in spite of his modest reluctance, he was taken by force and made a Grand Cross of the Bath.

General Horsford has always looked and done the appropriate thing in all the stations through which he has passed with so much success. As a subaltern he trained and rode his own horses; as a commander he handled his men and officers with high discretion; as a military secretary he gives evidence of exquisite good manners and a nice discrimination; and in all his successful career he has never provoked the envy even of those who have seen him preferred before themselves. He is precise in his notions, not quite incredibly difficult of access, a handsome man of nine and fifty, and has well been called the "beau ideal of "a soldier."