Owing to the fact that the Nile was exceptionally low the flotillas, upon which Wolseley's force relied, were unable to surmount the cataracts. A swift dash across the desert was the only alternative, but weeks elapsed before sufficient camels could be collected. Sir Herbert Stewart at the head of 1100 British troops eventually left Korti on a 170-mile trek across the desert, his advance being disputed at every step. He himself was killed, and there were over 250 casualties before they reached Metemmah. Sir Charles Wilson, succeeding to the command, started up the river for Khartoum, and his ship struck on a rock and further delayed the force. . . . On January 28 he arrived within sight of Khartoum and saw that the Egyptian flag was not flying . . . the relief was two days too late. Fragments of evidence give us some idea of the final stages of the catastrophe: Gordon's hair had turned suddenly white. The famine was so acute that dogs, donkeys, skins, gum, and palm fibre were devoured by the people. Hundreds died of hunger daily. By rumours, letters, and printed papers Gordon endeavoured to inspire the garrison with courage to hold out. When the Mahdi actually attacked resistance was futile and scarcely offered. Gordon was transfixed by Dervish spears and then hacked to death. His head was taken to the Mahdi and then fixed between the branches of a tree in the public highway, and all who passed threw stones at it. The Mahdi remained supreme lord of the Sudan. Not until thirteen years after was Gordon's death avenged by Lord Kitchener in the slaughter of Omdurman

and in Mr Strachey's trenchant phrase, “it all ended very happily-in a glorious slaughter of 20,000 Arabs, a vast addition to the British Empire, and a step in the Peerage for Sir Evelyn Baring" (Lord Cromer).

Such is Mr Strachey's contribution to the history of a period which we have for some time been pleased to malign. If it is his purpose to add another nail to the coffin he will be disappointed, for the general impression given by reading these lives of Manning, Miss Nightingale, Dr Arnold, and General Gordon is that the quartette have a more vigorous personality, more tenacity of purpose, more British pluck and heroism than we have ever accredited them with before. Mr Strachey has been savagely attacked for wanton perversion of the truth, for drawing totally inaccurate pictures of famous men, for casting ridicule on respected institutions and persons. His asperity is to some of us his chief charm: like Newman we imagine him to be a great hater, and what is the use of a historian who is not avowedly a partisan? The difficulty is rather to see what were the certain fragments of the truth about the Victorian age that Mr Strachey found in delving through the masses of compilations written round his four representatives. If he merely wanted to cast aspersions on the Established Church or religion in general, as we find him doing so frequently, he might have done so more directly: he certainly makes no point of convention or "grooviness which is our usual charge against our grandfathers Gordon was the least of a "groovy man imaginable. We are shown the dilatoriness of politicians, the shocking and culpable inefficiency of departments, it is true, but these things are not peculiar to the Victorians.

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No-it is better to search for no underlying policy, but merely to revel in a well-told tale. There can be no doubt in the mind of any reader that here is a book which will take deeper and deeper hold on the public mind as time goes on. It is a fresh method of

biography, brief, biased, and ruthless; it is in some ways reminiscent of Macaulay, but the touch of wickedness in it is all Mr Strachey's own. Whatever else it does not do, it sends us back to study very carefully all the contemporary documents written about the four subjects of his study, if only to have the joy of proving him wrong.

Furthermore, it destroys at a blow all the nebulous but deeply cherished visions and legends which we had conjured up from our nursery tales and at the hands of uneducated pastors and masters. Most of us have a theory that English history ceased with the fourth George at any rate we know nothing of the last hundred years beyond a few facts which are mainly wrong. Mr Strachey does give us a picture of life: it is interesting to know that in that molluscous age there were found people of energy, people of ambition, crafty, mean, spiteful, petty, passionate men and

women.

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II

TRIVIA

AVING read Mr Logan Pearsall Smith's most respectable and informative book on

the English Language in The Home University Library you will be totally unprepared for Trivia, but the first note in this amazingly frank book will key you up to the proper atmosphere required for appreciation of his philosophy.

"These pieces of moral prose," he writes, "have been written, dear Reader, by a large Carnivorous Mammal, belonging to that sub-order of the Animal Kingdom which includes also the Orang-outang, the tusked Gorilla, the Baboon with his bright blue and scarlet bottom, and the gentle Chimpanzee." And what is it that we are to learn from this large carnivorous mammal? Like a true son of the twentieth century he shows us the futility of the Eastern proverb which suggests that we should "go to the ant, thou sluggard."

"I have sought instruction from the Bees, and tried to appropriate to myself the old industrious lesson. And yet, hang it all, who by rights should be the teacher and who the learners? For those peevish, over-toiled, utilitarian insects, was there no lesson to be derived from the spectacle of Me? Gazing out at me with myriad eyes from their joyless factories, might they not learn at last-might I not finally teach them--a wise and more generous-hearted way to improve the shining hours?"

In other words, doesn't our Western civilisation need to be taught to seek a point of rest, not to be for ever patting itself on the back on account of its feverish energy? There are lessons to be learnt from the lilies of the field, which toil not, neither do they spin.

For instance, Mr Pearsall Smith in slack, reflective mood can absorb beauty without wishing to put it to a utilitarian use. "I had not remembered the glory of the wheat, nor imagined in my reading that ... there could be anything so rich, so prodigal, so reckless, as this opulence of ruddy gold."

It is not to be expected that such an attitude could win approval from his elders.

"They sit there for ever on the dim horizon of my mind, that Stonehenge circle of elderly, disapproving Faces-Faces of the Uncles and Schoolmasters and Tutors who frowned on my youth. In the bright centre and sunlight I leap, I caper, I dance my dance; but when I look up, I see they are not deceived. For nothing ever placates them, nothing ever moves to a look of approval that ring of bleak, old, contemptuous faces."

His hatred of all that these Stonehenge Faces stand for can be judged by his note In Church. "For the pen,' said the Vicar; and in the sententious pause that followed, I felt that I would offer any gifts of gold to avert or postpone the solemn, inevitable, and yet, as it seemed to me, perfectly appalling statement that The pen is mightier than the sword.'" And again :

"'Yes,' said Sir Thomas, speaking of a modern novel, it certainly does seem strange; but the novelist was right. Such things do happen.'

"But, my dear sir," I burst out, in my rudest manner, think what life is-just think what really

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