Gladstone's Eulogy of Gordon.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 106, 13 June 1885, Page 6

Gladstone's Eulogy of Gordon.

The right honourable gentleman (SirSfcafo.d Northcote) ha3 dwelt with the utmost propriety and the utmost feeling on the loss which the country has sustained in the death of General Gordon. He stated that General Gordon had devoted his life and .ill that makes life valuable to his Sovereign and to his country. Sir, he might have enlarged that eulogium, for the life of General Gordon was not limited even to those great objects. It was devoted to his Sovereign, to his country, and likewise to the world. General Gordon's sympathies were not limited by race, or colour, or religion. In point of fact, he seems to have deemed it his special honour to devote his energies and to risk his existence on behalf ' of those with whom he had no other tie than that of human sympathy. General Gordon was a hero, and permit me to eay he was still more— he was a hero among heroes. For there have been men who have obtained and deserved the praise of heroism whose heroism was manifested on the field of battle, or in pther conflicts, and who, when examined in the tenor of their personal lives, were not altogether blameless ; but if you take the case of this man, pursuo him into privacy, investigate his heart and his mind, you will find that he proposed to himself not any ideal of wealth and power, or even fame, but to do good was the object he proposed to himself in his whole life, and on that one object was his one desire to spend his existence. Such is the man we have lost a loss great indeed ; but he is not all lost, for such examples are fruitful in the future, and I trust there will grow from the contemplation of that character and those deeds other men who in the future time may emulate his noble and most Christian example, — 11 London Timea" f