followed. Those in power came to regard
him as eccentric, and when occasions arose that would have provided
him with congenial and much-desired employment on active service for
his own country, his name was passed over, and the best soldier in
England was left in inglorious and uncongenial inactivity. This was
regrettable, but natural. The most heroic cannot pose as being too
elevated above their fellows, or they will be left like Achilles
sulking in his tent.

There were moments, we have been told, when in the bosom of the family
circle he threw off the reserve in which he habitually wrapped
himself, and narrated in stirring if simple language the course of his
campaigns in China. These outbursts were few and far between. They
became still less frequent when he found that the effect of his
description was to increase the admiration his relatives never
concealed from him. His mother, whose feelings towards him were of a
specially tender nature, and whose solicitude for his personal safety
had been more than once evinced, took the greatest pride in his
achievements, and a special pleasure at their recital. But even her
admiration caused Charles Gordon as much pain as pleasure, and it is
recorded that while she was exhibiting to a circle of friends a map
drawn by him during his old term days at the Academy, he came into the
room, and seeing that it was being made a subject of admiration, took
it from his mother, tore it in half, and threw it into the fire grate.
Some little time after he repented of this act of rudeness, collected
the fragments, pasted them together, and begged his mother's
forgiveness. This damaged plan or map is still in existence. His
extraordinary diffidence and shrinking from all forms of praise or
exaltation was thus revealed at a comparatively early stage of his
career, and in connection with the first deeds that made him famous.
The incident just described shows that his way of asserting his
individuality was not always unattended with unkindness to those who
were nearest and dearest to him. His distrust of his own temper, and
of his capacity to speak and act conventionally, urged him towards a
solitary life; and when his fate took him into places and forms of
employment where solitude was the essential condition of the service,
it is not surprising that his natural shyness and humility, as well as
that habit of speaking his own mind, not only without fear or favour,
but also, it must be admitted