BRITISH HEROES.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—In your last number "Pro Patrial " asks for instances of heroism. Will these suit him ? Those young soldiers on board the 'Birkenhead,' who mustered on deck, without a murmur allowed the women and children to be saved in the boats, and without breaking their ranks went down with the sinking ship. Or, again, when the transport took fire in the Bay of Biscay on its way to the Crimea in 1854, Colonel Willoughby Moore thought that his men ought to be saved before himself, and the last that was seen of him by the survivors in the boats he was seated on the quarter-deck calmly waiting the approach of the flames. Or, again, of another sort at the combat of the Coa (Napier's "Battles and Sieges of the Peninsula," p. 51) :— "There was a fellow soldier, a North of Ireland man named Stewart, but jocularly called the boy, because of his youth, he was only nineteen, and of his gigantic stature and strength. He had fought bravely and had displayed great intelligence beyond the river and was one of the last men who came down to the bridge, but he would not pass. Turning round, he regarded the French with a grim look, and spoke aloud as follows : 'So ! This is the end of our boasting. This is our first battle, and we retreat! The boy Stewart will not live to hear that said.' Then striding forward in his giant might, he fell furiously on the nearest enemies with the bayonet, refused the quarter they seemed desirous of granting, and died fighting in the midst of them. Still more touching, more noble was the death of Sergeant Robert M'Quade. During M'Leod's rash this man, also from the North of Ireland, saw two Frenchmen level their muskets on rests against a high gap in a bank, awaiting the uprising of an enemy ; the present Sir George Brown, then a lad of sixteen, attempted to ascend at the fatal point, but 31'Quade, himself only twenty-four years of age, pulled him back, saying with a calm decided tone, You are too young, Sir, to be killed,' and then offering his own person to the fire, fell dead, pierced with both balls"
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