Sir Colin’s judgment, in estimating the motives by which Lieutenant Havelock was actuated in placing himself at the head of the 64th Regiment, was evidently biassed by the prejudices he entertained against the Victoria Cross. There is no reason to believe that the love of public honour, or any such selfish feeling, induced that gallant officer to expose his life; his own anxious desire that his conduct should be overlooked proves the contrary. If his object had been to obtain the Victoria Cross, he would certainly never have persuaded his father to suppress the telegram in which he recommended him for that honour. His father’s good fame was dearer to him than any honour which his country could confer, and he knew that his father could not allude to him as he had done without raising a storm of opposition. He wished, therefore, that the matter should be overlooked and forgotten. He had acted on the impulse of the moment; all depended on the steadiness with which the 64th advanced; he saw them without a mounted leader, and, without stopping to inquire the cause, he rushed forward and placed himself at their head. When he discovered afterwards that Major Stirling’s horse was wounded, and that he had supplanted that officer in the command of his regiment while faithfully discharging his duty, he must have felt that he had inadvertently treated him with injustice, and that the public recognition of his conduct as desiring reward would increase the wrong. He owed Major Stirling an apology for having usurped his place, but he had done nothing to earn the Victoria Cross, which was never intended to be an incentive to impulsive acts of undisciplined valour. It must have been with feelings of surprise and regret that he read his father’s telegram, which was not published in India till after his death, and learned that the Victoria Cross had been awarded to him for this particular deed. In the interval he had done other deeds of valour which fully merited this honour, and excited the admiration of every British soldier in India; it was unfortunate that the father, in his anxious desire to do justice to the son, should not have waited a little longer.