Tel-el-Kebir furnished an incidental illustration of our shortcoming in fire-discipline, which, as I contend, has its main cause in the effects of too stringent urgency to cover. Lord Wolseley showed that discernment which is one of his most valuable characteristics, in refraining from submitting his soldiers to the strain of a “swarm attack” up to the Egyptian position in fair daylight; and in choosing instead, as a minor risk, a night advance, spite of all its contingencies of hazard, with the hoped-for culmination of a surprise at daybreak. The issue proved his wisdom; and a phase of that combat, described with soldierly frankness by Sir Edward Hamley, must have given the commanding general a thrill of relief that he had conserved the spirit of his troops for the final dash, without exposing them to a previous ordeal of fire. That dash, made while yet the gloom of the dying night lay on the sand, General Hamley tells us, was 150 yards long, and it cost the brigade that carried it out 200 casualties ere the Egyptian entrenchment was crowned. It was done with the first impulse; no check was let stop the onward impetus of the _élan_; fire-discipline was not called into exercise at all. The whole of Hamley’s first line pressed on into the interior of the enemy’s position. The second line followed, but Hamley, with a wise prescience, “stopped the parts of it that were nearest to him as they came up, wishing to keep a support in hand which should be more readily available than such as the brigade in rear could supply.” It was well he did this thing; but for his doing of it, the shadow of a far other issue to Tel-el-Kebir lies athwart the following quotation. “The light was increasing every moment; our own men had begun to shoot immediately after entering the entrenched position, and aim could now be taken. The fight was at its hottest, and how it might end was still doubtful, for many of our advanced troops had recoiled even to the edge of the entrenchment” (beyond which they had penetrated 200 or 300 yards into the interior); “but there I was able to stop them, and reinforcing them with a small body I had kept in hand (who had remained, I think, in the ditch) I sent in all together, and henceforth they maintained their ground.” They recoiled, and they recoiled by reason of their weakness in fire-discipline. It is a fair query--How severe was the strain? As regards its duration, but a few moments’ fighting sufficed to bring about the recoil; that is made clear by the circumstance that the supporting brigade, following close as it did, yet was not up in time to redress the dangerous situation. In regard to its severity, General Hamley permits himself to use language of the most vivid character. “A hotter fire it is impossible to imagine.” The brigade was “enclosed in a triangle of fire.” “The enemy’s breechloaders were good, his ammunition abundant, and the air was a hurricane of bullets, through which shells from the valley tore their