Sir Charles Napier

Two things Napier carried through life of infinite importance – memory of home and hero-worship. He moved through life between these two lode-stones. The noble independence of mind possessed by his father, the ocean of love and tenderness of his mother, the associations of his early home, these were ever present through the wildest and roughest scenes of life – hallowed memories, green spots that deserts could not wither, nor fiercest fighting destroy. And in front lay the lofty ideal, the noble aspiration. Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, Napoleon – from early manhood these names were magnets to lift his mind above low desires and sordid cares, and when the shadows of death were gathering they still stood as lofty lights above the insults and the injustice of his enemies.

Carious too is it to watch in the career of Charles Napier how, out of the garden of memory which he kept green in his heart, many flowers sprang up as time went on, how his faith in an all-wise Providence strengthened and increased, how life beyond the grave became a positive necessity to him, how he looked forward to the time when men will think only of "acting right in the eyes of God, for then Christ will rule the world. What result will follow this utter defeat of the evil spirit, the God in heaven only knows, but the work will be Christ's work, and He will perhaps come to rule us with eternal life and happiness for those who have adhered to the Good Spirit – the God, who will then direct all things to His will." So must it ever be with the truly great minds which are based on what Mr. Ruskin calls "an infinitude of tenderness." They no more can live without religion than an oak-tree can grow without the sun. The mushroom, and the fungi, and the orchid of the human species may indeed flourish in the night of denial, but the hero is as certain to believe in God as the eagle is to seek the mountain-top.

Great lives have two lessons – one for the class to which the life belonged, the other to the nation which gave it birth. The latter is the lesson of paramount importance; for as the past is ever a mirror held up to the present in which to read the future, so the life of a dead hero may be said to mark for statesmen and rulers the rocks and shallows of their system of government. Never perhaps did a nation pay more swiftly and to the full the penalty of being blind to the real nature of the son which had been born to her than did England in her neglect of Napier. There are those who, writing and speaking of him since his death, have regretted his "utterances of passion," his "combativeness," his want of "serenity." "They [Charles Napier and his brother William] lived in storm instead of above the clouds," wrote one of their greatest admirers when both brothers had passed away; and if this has been said since they have left us, a hundredfold stronger was the censure of the world when they still moved among their fellow-men. But the passion and the vehemence of the Napiers was only the ocean wave of their hatred of oppression thundering against the bulwarks of tyranny. They should have dwelt above the clouds, forsooth, made less noise, toned down the vehemence of their denunciation. How easy all this is after the battle is over, and when we are sitting in a cushioned chair with our feet to the fire! But find me anything overthrown without noise, my friend – any citadel of human wrong captured, any battle ever won by the above-the-cloud method, – and I'll say you are right about these Napiers. Summer lightning is a very pretty thing, but lightning that has thunder behind it is something more than pretty. But perhaps I am wrong. They tell us now that battles are in future to be silent affairs – powder is to make no smoke, rifles and artillery are to go off without noise; there is to be no "vehemence" or "passion" about anything; you are to turn a noiseless wheel and the whole thing will be quietly done. All this is very nice, but I have an idea that when our sapient scientific soldier has arrived at all this noiseless excellence he will be inclined to follow the example of his rifle, and go off himself, making as little noise as possible in the operation, but in a direction opposite to his gun. So, being doubtful as to this question of noise, I turn to Charles Napier once more, and strangely enough this is what I read: "The rifle perfected will ring the knell of British superiority. The charging shouts of England's athletic soldiers will no longer be heard. Who will gain by this new order of fighting? Certainly the most numerous infantry. The soldier will think how he can hide himself from his enemy instead of how to drive a bayonet into that enemy's body."5

One other point ere my task is done. The present is pre-eminently the age when men long most to ring the coin of success, and hear it jingle during life. People will say of Napier that he stood in his own light. It is true he told the truth, but look what it cost him. Had he kept silence he would have been made a peer; they would have buried him in St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey, and put a grand monument over his grave. Hearing which and thinking upon it one comes to ask a simple question, – What is success? As the world translates the phrase, Napier was perhaps not a successful man. Yet he lived to see the principles he had struggled for through life, and suffered for in his struggles, everywhere triumphant. The great circle of human sympathy growing wider with every hour, and some new tribe among the toiling outcasts of men taken within its long-closed limits. He lived to see a Greater Britain and a larger Ireland growing beyond the seas – fulfilling, in regions never dreamt of by Canning, the work of liberty and progress which that Minister had vainly imagined was to be the mission of the South American Republics.

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.

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.