We have lost one of England's best military critics, as
well as one of our ablest and most competent and industrious Engineer officers, in Colonel Charles Chesney, who died last Sunday, in the forty-ninth year of his age, from the results of a chill caught in the terrible cold of the Sunday previous. He was appointed Commanding Engineer of the home district in 1874, and has teen for many years back one of the ablest advisers and military aduinistrators of the War Office. But it was as a military critic than he was best known to the English public. He was sent to observe the Franco-German War of 1870-71, and to de- duce from what be saw the military lessons by which England might best profit, and the reports which he presented on the subject were of the highest value. He himself, too, doubtless pro- fited, is a critic of military events, by what he saw, and his various essays on strategy and tactics gained force and life from his experience. His more popular studies—generally published first in the Edinburgh Reriew,—in military biography, were re- published in 1874, and achieved considerable popularity. Espe- cially the essay on General Lee was vivid and vigorous. There are few officers in the British Army who would have been more grievously missed than Colonel Charles Chesney.
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