Sir Charles Napier

And, coming from the great field of human justice and human liberty, in which he had ever been a manful fighter, to the narrower battle-ground of his own personal strifes and contentions, he lived, not indeed to see the truth of his opinions and the justice of his conduct fully vindicated by the unerring hand of Time, but near enough to the hour of that vindication to behold its dawn already reddening the horizon. When the light was made manifest to the world four years after the hero's death, the man who had stood faithful sentinel through so many years over his brother's fame – William Napier – was still left to hail the full-risen beam, and to show to a careless world the length and breadth of that signal vindication. And long before the lower crowd could see the light, it had flashed upon the great solitary summits. "A lynx-eyed, fiery man, with the spirit of an old knight in him," wrote Carlyle, one year before the Indian Mutiny. "More of a hero than any modern I have seen for a long time; a singular veracity one finds in him, not in his words alone, but in his actions, judgments, aims, in all that he thinks, and does, and says, which indeed I have observed is the root of all greatness or real worth in human creatures, and properly the first, and also the earliest, attribute of what we call genius among men." And then comes a bit which it would be well to write very high and very large in all the schools and examination rooms in the land. "The path of such a man through the foul jungle of this world, the struggle of Heaven's inspiration against the terrestrial fooleries, cupidities, and cowardices, cannot be other than tragical, but the man does tear out a bit of way for himself too; strives towards the good goal, inflexibly persistent, till his long rest come. The man does leave his mark behind him, ineffaceable, beneficent to all; maleficent to none. Anarchic stupidity is wide as the night; victorious wisdom is but as a lamp in it, shining here and there."

So wrote of Charles Napier the greatest thinker of our age – that is the mountain-top. If you want to find the other extreme of estimate, you will go to Trafalgar Square, and on the pedestal of Napier's statue there read – "Erected by Public Subscription, the most numerous Contributors being Private Soldiers." Between these two grades of admiration lies the life of Charles James Napier.

notes

1

Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke.

2

"The Fiftieth Regiment, although called the West Kent, was chiefly formed of Irishmen." – Napier's Military Law.

3

The gratitude of men for toil and service given to them is not so fleeting as people suppose. "They still speak of Napier in Cephalonia as of a god," said a Greek lady to the writer in this year, 1890.

4

It should be unnecessary to remind my readers of the fine poem in which Sir Francis Doyle, whose heart always went out to knightly deeds, has commemorated this incident, —The Red Thread of Honour.

5

Defects of Indian Government.