III. A SOLDIER. CAPTAIN WILLIAM J. GILL, R.E. "IT IS OF SUCH STUFF AS THIS THAT GOD'S HEROES ARE MADE. Frederick Robertson. 66 DO THOU THY DUTY LIKE A MAN TO THY COUNTRY, THY QUEEN, AND THY GOD, AND COUNT THY LIFE A WORTHLESS THING, AS DID THE HOLY MEN OF OLD."-Westward Ho! "And had he not high honour,— The hillside for a pall; To lie in state, while angels wait, God hath His mysteries of grace, He hides them deep, like the hidden sleep Of him He loved so well."-C. F. ALEXANDER, A SOLDIER. DDED to the foregoing is another Early Death; too early for all but himself,-that of the brave and loving (or these terms might be transposed) Captain Gill. Little did I dream, years ago, when in a brilliant day of early spring I was seated under the palms at the Wells of Moses, on the borders of the Red Sea, and looking towards the mountains of the Sinai desert, that these were to have, in a coming future, so terrible an association with the tragic end of a dear young friend! This very brief and fragmentary notice will in nowise interfere with the touching monographs which have already appeared from his scientific and soldier compatriots; neither will it infringe on those fuller and ampler details of a heroic life that will doubtless in due time be given to the world-embracing all that he has done in his country's service, as well as in the interests of geographical research. This is a special amaranth which one of his very oldest acquaintances would lay on his tomb.1 1 I may, meanwhile, refer the reader to the interesting statements given in a reprint from the "Royal Engineers' Journal," including a Speci when, He was born in India, at Bangalore, in 1843. I had exceptional opportunities of knowing his early years which his later contemporaries did not enjoy ; being brought, from circumstances, into close connection with him in his childhood and boyhood. ally will one summer ever linger in the memory, as a boy of six years of age, he spent three months on a visit in my Scottish country home. Our main recollection of him then, was that of an engaging child, with expressive eyes, long dark silken eyelashes, and a mouth of singular sweetness. The predominant feature of all, which seems now to have been strangely unlike his future characteristics, was an almost feminine gentleness. As I write these lines, I have before me an invaluable locket, but one unfortunately taken by the perishable process of the old daguerreotype. In looking at it, it is difficult to realise that that tender, loving boy, whose child-features in the blurred picture are still sufficiently recalled, could have developed into the chivalrous lion-heart of maturer years. Owing to his father and mother's residence in India, his lot was cast, in the first years of his life, among beloved friends, whose interest in him, by reason of intimate ties, was only second to a mother's love. his own sweet disposition, precocious intelligence, and From succinct outline of Captain Gill's explorations, spoken by Lord Aberdare, at the meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, 13th November 1882. In the same Report are embodied explanatory details by Lord Northbrook regarding his last fatal mission. winning ways, these feelings were only deepened and intensified; and a mutual affection of thirty-seven years' standing, terminated alone with the sorrowful close. It was in that early adopted home that his training, alike moral and intellectual, was begun. This was carried on during the years when he enjoyed the affection and care of his own mother on her return from India. Youthful intelligence was further braced and strengthened by subsequent attendance at Brighton College, where he continued from 1856 to 1861,1 and then his life-work was begun at the Royal Academy at Woolwich. His subsequent character had one very marked peculiarity, a shyness and reticence which all his contact with men and the world never removed. But those best acquainted, and who claimed intimate fellowship, understood and condoned what at times was a subject of regret with his friends; knowing well, as they did, the warmth of his attachments, the generosity of his heart, and the true nobility of his nature. In the words of the military friend who seems to have most won his affections, "reserved, often taciturn in company, but having beneath that undemonstrative exterior a soul of fire." To the house of those dearest friends of his early childhood and youth just " 2 1 On his leaving Brighton College, the then Head Master, Dr. Griffith, appends at the end of the testimonial, "I have written no testimonial with greater confidence and satisfaction than this." 2 Colonel Yule's remarks at the proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society (supra). adverted to, he would often gladly find his way from Woolwich to spend a quiet and congenial Sunday. The phase of his many-sided life to which I purpose first to refer is the Religious one. In doing so, let me define what I mean in his case by religion. Not the religion-pseudo-orthodox-of mere phrase and sentiment, feeling or ritual. True, indeed, he would have been the last to subscribe, without qualification, to Pope's familiar words: "He can't be wrong whose life is in the right." He had his own firmly-rooted beliefs early instilled : and there were placed before him, in the most receptive years of boyhood, living illustrations of the power and beauty of Christianity, both in its active and passive manifestations :-add to this, and what he never forgot, the influences of more than one earnest ministry. 1 It was, however, because these foundations were so reliable and secure, that a character-superstructure was built upon them, consisting of all that was "pure, and lovely, and of good report." 2 وو 1 Let me note specially here, the faithful teachings of Prebendary Cadman, when in Park Chapel, Chelsea, whose sermons for children were of a rarely excellent character. Also the late Mr. Collinson, of St. James's, Clapham; and Mr. Smith, formerly of All Souls, Brighton, who recalls an incident of his young friend before first going to India, that he repaired of his own accord to his house "for converse and for prayer. 2 He entered Woolwich Royal Military Academy in 1862, and got his commission in the Royal Engineers in 1864. |