His letters, written in all the freedom of unreserved intercourse, will give a truer notion of his character than the most labored description; they exhibit the undercurrent of deep feelings that ran through even his most playful moods, the yearning after home that mingled with the dreams of ambition and the thirst for the excitement of war, the almost womanly tenderness that coexisted with the stern determination of the soldier. They show that though his lot was cast in camps, he was not a mere soldier; though a hanger-on on the outskirts of civilization amidst wild tribes, he had a keen appreciation of the refinement and elegancies of civilized life; that though in India, he remembered that he was an Englishman; that though living amongst the heathen, he did not forget that he was a Christian.
I have not attempted to write a biography, but have allowed my brother to speak for himself, merely supplying such connecting links as seemed absolutely necessary.
Indeed, I could do no otherwise; for unhappily, during the twelve years of his soldier's life,--those years in which his character received its mature development,--I knew him only by his letters, or by the reports of others; when we parted on board the ship that carried him from England, in 1845, we parted to meet no more in this world. My recollections of him, vivid as they are, are not of the leader of men in council and the battle-field, but of the bright and joyous boy, the life of the home circle, the tender and affectionate son, the loving brother, the valued friend, the popular companion.
Of what he became afterwards my readers will have the same means of judging as myself. He seems to me to have been one of whom not only his family, but his country may well be proud,--a worthy representative of the English name and nation amongst the tribes of India, an impersonation of manly straightforwardness, and unhesitating daring, and irresistible power.
I cannot doubt but that the verdict of his countrymen will confirm my judgment.
Many too, I believe, will agree with me in thinking that these pages prove that the poetry and romance of war are not yet extinct, that even the Enfield rifle has not reduced all men to a dead level, but that there is still a place to be found for individual prowess, for the lion heart, and the eagle eye, and the iron will. One seems transported back from the prosaic nineteenth century to the ages of romance and chivalry, and to catch a glimpse, now of a Paladin of old, now of a knightly hero _sans peur et sans reproche_; now, of a northern chieftain, "riding on border foray," now of a captain of free-lances; yet all dissolving into a Christian soldier of our own day.