Gordon! A name to gild our island story, Opulent yet in many a noble name, With lustre brighter than mere statecraft's fame, More radiant than the warrior's glittering glory. Such lesser lights eclipse them in the fine Sun-glow of selfless valour such as thine, Soldier whose sword, like Galahad's, was not used To hew out honour, but to champion right; Plan-shaper who, in council as in fight, Wast endlessly resourceful, yet refused, Death-snared, an easy flight! [Illustration: "MY BOYS!"] Other pens were busy over this episode, which inspired perhaps the most scarifying epigram of our times:-- Judas despairing died, his guilt confessed, But had he lived in this our age and city, He surely would have figured with the best Upon a Christ Memorial Committee. The disaster, however, had one heartening result in the offer of military assistance from Canada, Victoria and New South Wales, duly recorded by _Punch_ in his cartoon of the Lion and the Colonial cubs. The year 1885 had opened with a sinister display of activity by dynamiters, and _Punch_ rebuked Sir William Harcourt for his alleged apathy and imperious resentment of criticism by calling him the "Not-at-Home Secretary." America promptly took legislative action, refusing sanctuary to dynamiters, and was loudly applauded, while Mr. Parnell, in _Punch's_ opinion, missed a golden opportunity for disavowing and condemning these outrages. In "What Mr. Parnell _might_ have said" _Punch_ printed the speech which he did _not_ make but ought to have made, "as a man, an Irishman and a Christian." [Illustration: THE POLITICAL "MRS. GUMMIDGE" MRS. GUMMIDGE-GLADSTONE: "I ain't what I could wish myself to be. My troubles has made me contrairy. I feel my troubles, and they make me contrairy. I make the house uncomfortable. I don't wonder at it!!!" JOHN PEGGOTTY-BULL (_deeply sympathizing aside_): "She's been thinking of the old 'un!"--_David Copperfield._] The days of the Gladstone administration were numbered, and the motion in favour of Proportional Representation excited but a languid and academic interest. _Punch_ thought the system far too complicated, and sought to reduce it to absurdity by a practical illustration. He was much more serious in his resentment at the hectoring attitude of Bismarck _à propos_ of a recent speech of the Imperial Chancellor. In "Lecturing a Lecturer--a Friendly Tip to the Teuton Titan," he showed Bismarck standing in a truculent pose before a map of Europe while _Punch_ looks on in amusement. The point of the accompanying verses is that Britain was not to be scared or scolded into submission:--