opened a tremendous fire on the houses, and the men took shelter
in line, being under no command, their own officers not knowing
where they were to go, or anything about the place, and no
Engineer officer being with them. The men sheltered themselves in
the houses until they were knocked about their ears. They then
remained in different places--in fact, wherever they could get
any shelter, until dusk, as, if they had attempted to retire,
they would have been all destroyed. The men of General Eyre's
column found lots of drink in the houses. Our losses in the four
columns are--1400 killed and wounded, 64 officers wounded, and 16
killed. The French lost 6000 killed and wounded, they say!
Nothing has occurred since the assault, but it is determined to
work forward by sap and mine!"

In a subsequent letter he wrote: "Remember, in spite of all the absurd
reports in the papers, that our troops never once passed the abattis
in front of the Redan, which is sixty yards from it, and that we have
never spiked a gun of the Russians," and before closing his narrative
account of the Redan, the passage in which Mr Kinglake refers to
Gordon's evidence and action on this eventful day may well be quoted.
It appears from his statement that Gordon lost his temper through
excitement at the repulse, and even upbraided and used angry language
to his old friend and comrade, Lieutenant, now General Sir Gerald,
Graham, on his coming back to the trenches. Such language, it may be
pointed out, could not have been used with less justice to any soldier
taking part in the assault than to the man who had carried a ladder
farther than anyone else, and twice endeavoured to place it against
the Redan. It illustrates the perfervid zeal and energy of the young
officer, who explained in his letters home how he thought the Russian
fortress might have been carried at a rush, and appropriately
introduces the passage in which Mr Kinglake records his opinion of
Gordon:

"This impassioned lieutenant of sappers was a soldier marked out
for strange destinies, no other than Gordon--Charles Gordon--then
ripening into a hero, sublimely careless of self, and a warrior
saint of the kind that Moslems rather than Christians are fondly
expecting from God."

I cannot refrain from quoting here a letter I received from Mr
Kinglake when I sent him a copy of my edition of "General Gordon'