had so long
protected them. A commander-in-chief of the old European school might
have ridiculed these emotional assemblages, or, at best, passed them
without notice, as freaks in which he disdained to take part. Lee,
on the contrary, greeted the religious enthusiasm of his troops
with undisguised pleasure. He went among them, conversed with the
chaplains, assisted the good work by every means in his power; and
no ordained minister of the Gospel could have exhibited a simpler,
sincerer, or more heartfelt delight than himself at the general
extension of religious feeling throughout the army. We have related
how, in talking with army-chaplains, his cheeks flushed and his eyes
filled with tears at the good tidings. He begged them to pray for him
too, as no less needing their pious intercession; and in making the
request he was, as always, simple and sincere. Unaccustomed to exhibit
his feelings upon this, the profoundest and most sacred of subjects,
he was yet penetrated to his inmost soul by a sense of his own
weakness and dependence on divine support; and, indeed, it may be
questioned whether any other element of the great soldier's character
was so deep-seated and controlling as his spirit of love to God. It
took, in the eyes of the world, the form of a love of duty; but with
Lee the word duty was but another name for the will of the Almighty;
and to discover and perform this was, first and last, the sole aim of
his life.

We elaborate this point before passing to the last great campaign of
the war, since, to understand Lee in those last days, it is absolutely
necessary to keep in view this utter subjection of the man's heart to
the sense of an overruling Providence--that Providence which "shapes
our ends, rough-hew them how we will." We shall be called upon to
delineate the soldier meeting adverse circumstances and disaster at
every turn with an imperial calmness and a resolution that never
shook; and, up to a certain point, this noble composure may be
attributed to the stubborn courage of the man's nature. There came in
due time, however, a moment of trial when military courage simply
was of no avail--when that human being never lived, who, looking to
earthly support alone, would not have lost heart and given up the
contest. Lee did not, in this hour of conclusive trial, either lose
heart or give up the struggle; and the world, not understanding the
phenomenon, gazed at him with wonder. Few were aware of the true
ex