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I have said elsewhere that there is in Gordon the cheer and charge of our chivalry. There is. He was well worthy of a place in the charge of our cavalry at Waterloo, or Balaclava. There is in him that “magnificence” which now, alas, as the Frenchman truly said, “is not war.” These men “glory in daring that dies or prevails.” And when, as at Balaclava, they die, their poet exclaims (in capitals)—

“not in vain,

as a type of our chivalry!”

What exclamations of rapture such a sight draws from him!

“Oh! the moments of yonder maddening ride,

long years of life outvie!...

God send me an ending as fair as his,

who died in his stirrups there!...”

Here is a race:—

“They came with the rush of the southern surf,

on the bar of the storm-girt bay;

and like muffled drums on the sounding turf

their hoof-strokes echo away.”

I know no poetry that describes the rush of horsemen quite as Gordon does. Take this description of the Balaclava charge from his “Lay of the Last Charger.”

“Now we were close to them, every horse striding