more congenial and appropriate manner of death than he has found, at the
age of eighty-two, as an inspiring visitor to the lines of the gallant
troops of all kinds whom he himself had so often led to victory. It has
been said that no man can be called happy until his death, and certainly
no one was ever more felicitous in the manner of his end than the veteran
hero, the blameless "Bayard" of the British Army, who has well been called
one of Ireland's greatest Englishmen.

Yet his name will continue to serve as an inspiration to the Army which
adored him; and doubtless his last moments were soothed by the thought
that the soldiers whom he so fervently loved had just added to their
laurels by the brave repulse on the Yser of two Brigades, or a Division,
of the boasted Prussian Guards, forming the very flower and kernel of the
Kaiser's army. And news also must have reached the conqueror of Paardeburg
and Pretoria that the German-prompted and German-paid rebellion against
the Union of which he had laid the foundation-stone--not with the trowel
of an architect, but with the sword of a soldier--was collapsing under the
well-directed blows of such an Imperial patriot and statesman as General
Botha, proud to wear the uniform of the hero of Candahar.

Thus the last hours of our veteran Field-Marshal must have been consoled
with the reflection that, in spite of the fact of all his warnings and his
exhortations having fallen on deaf ears, victory was gilding our arms, as
well as those of our Allies, all round; and that the loss of two of our
cruisers off the coast of Chile had been more than offsetted by the
destruction of the notorious commerce-destroyer Emden in the seas of
Sumatra and the cornering of the equally elusive Königsberg among the
palm-trees of an East African lagoon--fit incident for the pages of
Captain Marryat or Mr. George Henty, beloved of the boy-devourers of
stirring adventure books.