n
well-doing that his departure will be felt by many as a personal
calamity. There are those who even now are reaping the rewards of
his kindness. His charity was essentially charity, and had its
root in deep philanthropic feeling and goodness of heart,
shunning the light of publicity, but coming even as the rain in
the night-time, that in the morning is noted not, but only the
flowers bloom, and give a greater fragrance.... All will wish him
well in his new sphere, and we have less hesitation in penning
these lines from the fact that laudatory notice will confer but
little pleasure upon him who gave with the heart and cared not
for commendation."

Gordon left for Galatz on 1st October 1871. He had visited and
described it fourteen or fifteen years before, and he found little or
no change there. The special task intrusted to the Commission of which
he was a member was to keep open by constant and vigilant dredging the
mouth of the Sulina branch of the Danube. He discovered very soon that
the duties were light and monotonous, and in the depressing
atmosphere--social and political as well as climatic--of the Lower
Danube, he pined more than ever for bracing work, and for some task
about which he could feel in earnest. The same conclusion seems to
have forced itself upon his mind at the beginning and at the end of
his stay at Galatz. In one of his first letters he exclaims: "How I
like England when I am out of it! There is no place in the world like
it!" In another letter, written on the very day of his departure home,
he wrote: "Tell S. to thank God that he was born an Englishman."
Gordon was always intensely patriotic. His patriotism partook of the
same deep and fervid character as his religion, and these and many
other little messages in his private correspondence furnish striking
evidence to the fact.

The mention of Galatz recalls an incident, showing how long was his
memory, and how much he clung to old friendships. During the
Commune--that is to say, when he was still at Gravesend--the papers
stated that a General Bisson had been killed at the Bridge of Neuilly
on 9th April 1871. He wrote to Marshal Macmahon to inquire if he was
the same officer as his old colleague on the Danube, and received, to
his regret, an affirmative answer. General Bisson and Gordon had kept
up a correspondence, in which the former always signed himself Bisson,
C.B., being very proud