The Colonial Office has appointed Mr. G. Berkeley, of Lagos,
Governor-in-Chief of Western Africa during the crisis, and of course he is nearest to the spot. We should, however, have much preferred an Indian, or the officer favoured by the Times, Colonel Gordon, an engineer now doing civil work on the Danube, who, when the Taiping revolt was at its height, got together a small army of coolies, officered by the European raacaldom or impecunious ability of Shanghai, defeated a Taiping Army ten, times his own strength, and finally crushed that formidable movement, to come home and be forgotten, as every Engineer officer except Lord Napier of Ma.gdala always has been. An English Engineer officer can never be an ignorant man, and therefore he is regarded with a sort of hostile awe by the regular administrators of the Army, who stroke their whiskers and intimate that Engineers are not exactly soldiers, and never go under fire. They only take cities, and trifles of that sort, and should keep, their place.
