GORDON 



303 



in iMiIoiiiul employment, mill finally returned tn 

 England in tin- close uf IMM'2. Almost tin* whole of 

 tin- following year was spent liy him in 1'alestine 

 in iiiiliroken ipiiet ami rejection. Early in Iss-J he 

 ua> a>ked liy the British government to proceed 

 on.'.' more to the Soudan, where the events \vhieh 

 hud taken place in Eg\ pt since he quitted it four 

 - In- fore ha>l -iM'ii rise to a long catalogue 

 :.i-iroiihe. The Moslem populations had risen 

 in levolt, defeating the armies of Egypt and isolat- 

 ing her garrisons. To remove these garrisons from 

 the Soudan was the primary ohjert of Cordon's 

 mission; that accomplished, lie was to jirodaim 

 the separation of the country from (Egyptian rule. 

 l!ut all this was changed hy the hard logic of faci-. 

 A month after Cordon readied Khartoum that 

 place was invested hy the troops of the Mahdi, 

 tin- leader of the Soudan revolt. Then liegaii what 

 may truly be called the supremely heroic period of 

 Cordon's life. The world seemed to recognise that 

 a LTieat man was in the throes of a great peril. In 

 an age when merit is rarely found unobtrusive, 

 and when genius is apt to exhibit its light on the 

 house-top, Cordon, whose whole life had been one 

 endeavour to depreciate his own merit and to deny 

 himself the glory of bis actions, l>ecame at once 

 the centre of perhaps the widest attention giyen in 

 our time to one man. After the siege or Khar- 

 toum had lasted five months a relief expedition was 

 organised in England. In September the advance 

 u p the Nile began. Early in November the troops 

 entered the Soudan at the Second Cataract, the 

 greater portion of the expedition moving in boats 

 built in England for the passage of the upper 

 cataracts, many of which had never been navigated 

 liy any craft. After two months of very arduous 

 labour the advance, crossing the desert from Korti, 

 and finding at the latter place some of Gordon's 

 -t earners, arrived in the end of January 1885 in 

 the neighbourhood of Khartoum. It was too late. 

 The place had been taken by the Mahdi two days 

 earlier. Gordon had fallen. One thing, however, 

 was gained by the toil and blood of this expedi- 

 tion. It was the journal kept by Gordon during 

 the latter half of the siege. From this journal he 

 stands l>efore us as in no other way could he have 

 been revealed to us a wonderful instance of cour- 

 age, faith, resolution, and humility ; a man from 

 whose life and death we gather that, amid all the 

 change of science and system, the mould in which 

 the true hero is cast remains the same. 



See Andrew Wilson's Ever Victorious Army ( 1868 ) ; 

 Birkbcok Hill's Gordon in Central Africa ( 1881 ) ; Gordon's 

 own Reflections in Palestine (1884), Last Journals 

 ( ISC) ), and Letters to his Sitter (1888) ; and the Lives of 

 him hy Hake ( The Story of Chinese (lordon, 2 vols. 1884- 

 85), Arch. Forbes (1884), by his brother, Sir Henry 



<ordoil, LOUD GEORGE, was born in London, 

 Jfith December 17.~>1, the third son of the third 

 Duke of Cordon. From Kton he entered the 

 Bvy, and rose to be lieutenant, but quitted the 

 ser\ice during the American war, after a dispute 

 with the Admiralty. Elected in 1774 M.I', for 

 the pocket borough of Ludgershall, Wiltshire, he 

 presently attacked both sides with such freedom 

 as to give rise to the saying that there were 

 three parlies in parliament the ministry, the 

 opposition, and Lord George Gordon.' Still he 

 displayed considerable talent in debate, and no 

 deficiency of wit or argument. A bill bavin-, in 

 1778, passed the legislature for the relief of Etonian 

 Catholics from certain penalties and disabilities 

 (see CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION), the Protestant 

 Association of London was, among other societies, 

 formed for the purpose of procuring its repeal, and 



in November 17"! Lord George wax elected it* 

 president. On '2<[ .June 17SO he headed a vaut 

 and exdteil mob of ~i(),(MX) per-on-, who, decked 

 with blue cockades, marched in procenmon from St 

 George's Fields to the House of ('illinium- to pre- 

 sent a iietition for the repeal of the meamire. 

 DfMdfal not- ensued in the metropoli-. lasting 

 five days, in the course of which many Catholic 

 chapels and private dwelling-houses, Newijate 

 prison, and the mansion of the chief-jus; ice. Lord 

 Niansfield, were destroyed. The magistrates feared 

 to read the Hint Act, but at length on the 7th, 

 when thirty-six fires were blazing at once, the 

 troops were called out by the king, ami everywhere 

 drove the rioters before them, 210 lieing killed. 248 

 wounded, and 13f) arrested, of whom '21 were after- 

 wards executed. Property to the amount of 

 180,000 had been destroyed in the riots, a \ivid 

 description of which is given in Dickens's Bttntab^ 

 Jl/t'/i/c. Lord George himfeelf was tried for high- 

 treason ; but Erskine's defence got him oil on the 

 ground of absence of treasonable design. His sub- 

 sequent conduct seemed that of a person of unsound 

 mind. Having, in 1786, refused to come forward as 

 a witness in a court of law, he was excommunicated 

 by the Archbishop of Canterbury for contempt. In 

 1787 he was convicted, on two official informations, 

 for a pamphlet retlecting on the laws and criminal 

 justice of the country, and for publishing a lil>el on 

 Marie Antoinette and the French ambassador in 

 London. To evade sentence he retired to Holland, 

 but was sent back to England, and apprehended at 

 Birmingham. He died in Newgate of fever, 1st 

 Noveml>er 1793, having latterly become a proselyte 

 to Judaism. There is a vindication of him by Dr 

 Robert Watson (1795). 



Gordon, SIR JOHN WATSON, Scottish portrait- 

 painter, son of Captain Watson of the royal navy, 

 was born at Edinburgh in 1788. His training in 

 art was got in the studios of his uncle, George 

 Watson, and Sir Henry Raeburn. At first he 

 essayed imaginative subjects, but on Raeburn 's 

 death in 1823 he stepped into his place as the first 

 portrait-painter of Scotland. Three years later 

 lie took the surname of Gordon ; in 1850 he was 

 elected president of the Royal Scottish Academy 

 and knighted, and in 1851 he became a London 

 Royal Academician. Gordon was as national in 

 his art as it is possible for a portrait-painter to be ; 

 and nearly every man of note in Scotland, besides 

 not a few in fingland, sat to him for their por- 

 traits. Among his best-known works may be men- 

 tioned ' Sir Walter Scott,' ' Dr Chalmers,' ' Earl of 

 Dalhousie,' 'Sir Alexander Hope,' ' Lord President 

 Hope,' ' Sir John Shaw Lefevre,' and 'the Provost 

 of Peterhead.' The last picture gained the gold 

 medal at the French Exhibition or 1855. Gordon 

 Avas not a distinguished colourist, grays and quiet 

 hues being predominant in his pictures. He died 

 at Edinburgh, 1st June 1864. 



LuciE, LADY DUFF, a clever writer, 

 was the only child of John Austin, the jurist, and 

 of Sarah Taylor, his wife, and was born in London, 

 24th June 1821. In 1826 she went with her parent- 

 to Germany, whence, after two years' stay, she re- 

 turned, speaking German like her native language. 

 At Boulogne in 1834 she met Heine, an acquaint 

 ance renewed with tender pathos twenty years 

 later, when Heine was dying at Paris. In 1840 

 she became the wife of Sir Alexander Duff Gordon. 

 In 1842 she gave to the world the first of her long 

 series of translations from the German, Xiebuhr's 

 Gods and Heroes of Greece. This was followed by 

 the Amber Witch, begun 1843 ; the French in 

 Algiers, published 1845 ; and Feuerbach's Bemark- 

 able Criminal Trials, 1846. In 1849, in conjunction 

 with her husband, she translated Ranke's Ilouse of 



