General Gordon's Last Journal. (Ilegan Paul, Trench, and Co.)—Bo much
partisanship has mingled with the worship of the late General Gordon, that it is hardly possible not to be a little suspicions of the motives which led to the publication on the eve of the General Election of a fac-simile of the last of the six volumes of Journals despatched by him before the fall of Khar- toum. Looked at for and by itself, however, this may be allowed to be both a very handsome and highly interesting volume. It is prepared from the photographic negatives taken for the War Office, and a line drawn round the text shows the exact size of the telegraph forme on which, as is well known, Gordon wrote his journals. There is nothing very remarkable about the penmanship of Gordon. He wrote the free, flowing hand of a man of action who is in the habit of writing a great deal, but who also writes exactly as he feels. Circumstances being duly considered, there are singularly few erasures ; and such as have been made are as distinct as the handwriting of the General itself. What with his diagrams, his italics, and his underlined extracts from news- papers, we have here, as it were, instantaneously photographed for
the play of tragedy and comedy upon that soul, which, however, tragedy could never quite embitter, and comedy could never divert from the seriousness of the Christian or the vigilance of the soldier. There is no departure from the easy firmness of Gordon's handwriting towards the close. His final and prophetic " Good-bye " has a positively cheerful look.
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