GENERAL GORDON
The month of January brings around one anniversary which, of late, has been much in the minds of the British people. On January 26th, 1885, General Gordon was slain at Khartoum. Born at Woolwich in 1833, he had seen an extraordinary variety of service when he was sent to withdraw the garrisons shut up in the Soudan. It is needless to recall the circumstances of his gallant resistance in Khartoum, and of the noble valour shown in the unsuccessful endeavour to relieve him. The annals of the Empire can present to us men whose careers have been no less varied than that of Gordon, and soldiers whose piety has been as deep. Yet few of them have ever touched the public imagination as did the man who faced his death at Khartoum fourteen years ago.
FOX'S MONUMENT IN THE ABBEY.
(Photo: York and Son, Notting Hill, W.)
The anniversaries of December brought together two rival statesmen of the first rank; so do the anniversaries of this present month. On January 24th, 1749, Charles James Fox was born. On January 23rd, 1806, his rival, William Pitt, died. They passed away within a few months of each other, and lie together in Westminster Abbey, hard by the scene of their many struggles.
WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH.
To the month of January belongs Francis Bacon, who was born on the 22nd. Posterity finds it an unpleasant task to join in the same thoughts the man who deserted his friends in the hour of their need, and used the highest office for the base ends of personal and financial aggrandisement, and the man who wrote the "Advancement of Learning" and the "Novum Organum." But Francis Bacon is not the only person whose practice has not always squared with the principles he taught to others. He died at Highgate in 1626.
To the same month belongs another philosopher, George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne. Born in 1685, he is remembered mainly for the system of philosophy associated with his name, which treats the exterior material world as existing only in the mind. Few now think of him as one of the first to feel deeply interested in the spiritual necessities of the heathen. He was the originator of a project for converting the savages of America through the agency of a college to be established at Bermuda.