44 MEMOIR OF LIEUT. TUPPER.
nance, and he and his next brother, Charles, when midshipmen in the Victory together, were designated on board as the handsome brothers.* His love of reading continued in its full force to the last, and as he possessed a very copious fund of information, particularly on naval subjects, he was often referred to on a disputed point. Cruelly cut off in the open- ing bud of manhood, when fortune seemed at length propitious, and life in consequence was become doubly dear to him, the only consolation left to his near rela- tives is, that he, unlike his brother De Vic, died in the service of his own country. He, who sketches this feeble tribute to his memory, was the elder com- panion of his childhood, and the friend of his later years ; and he still feels, from sad experience, how impossible it is to forget him, and how poignant is the ever recurring thought of their earthly separation. Who indeed has not observed that in this world there are griefs of a nature which time cannot oblite- rate, which sympathy cannot assuage, — that there are secret sorrows which embitter our happiest hours, and terminate only in the grave, — that there are sudden bereavements whose wounds heal but for a moment, or perhaps never cease to bleed ? And in this instance the void, which the premature loss of an amiable young man will ever cause in the hearts of those who knew him best, is the surest testimony of departed worth, and the only eulogium worthy of the good, the unfortunate, and the brave.
The truly gallant Captain Gordon was, as soon as he recovered in some degree from his desperate
- By a singular coincidence the two brothers commenced their career in
the same ship, the Victory, to which their near relative, Lieutenant Carre Tupper, belonged when he was killed in the Mediterranean in one of her boats, and all three lost their lives in boats !
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