Our notice of Stratford may appear unduly long to some readers, but it is not without a distinct reference to the subject of this volume.  In this quiet old mansion—­and in the very apartment where Richard Henry and Francis Lightfoot Lee first saw the light—­Robert E. Lee was born.  The eyes of the child fell first upon the old apartments, the great grounds, the homely scenes around the old country-house—­upon the tall Lombardy poplars and the oaks, through which passed the wind bearing to his ears the murmur of the Potomac.

He left the old home of his family before it could have had any very great effect upon him, it would seem; but it is impossible to estimate these first influences, to decide the depth of the impression which the child’s heart is capable of receiving.  The bright eyes of young Robert Lee must have seen much around him to interest him and shape his first views.  Critics charged him with family pride sometimes; if he possessed that virtue or failing, the fact was not strange.  Stratford opened before his childish eyes a memorial of the old splendor of the Lees.  He saw around him old portraits, old plate, and old furniture, telling plainly of the ancient origin and high position of his family.  Old parchments contained histories of the deeds of his race; old genealogical trees traced their line far back into the past; old servants, grown gray in the house, waited upon the child; and, in a corner of one of the great apartments, an old soldier, gray, too, and shattered in health, once the friend of Washington and Greene, was writing the history of the battles in which he had drawn his sword for his native land.

Amid these scenes and surroundings passed the first years of Robert E. Lee.  They must have made their impression upon his character at a period when the mind takes every new influence, and grows in accordance with it; and, to the last, the man remained simple, hearty, proud, courteous—­the country Virginian in all the texture of his character.  He always rejoiced to visit the country; loved horses; was an excellent rider; was fond of plain country talk, jests, humorous anecdote, and chit-chat—­was the plain country gentleman, in a word, preferring grass and trees and streams to all the cities and crowds in the world.  In the last year of his life he said to a lady:  “My visits to Florida and the White Sulphur have not benefited me much; but it did me good to go to the White House, and see the mules walking round, and the corn growing.”

We notice a last result of the child’s residence now, or visits afterward to the country, and the sports in which he indulged—­the superb physical health and strength which remained unshaken afterward by all the hardships of war.  Lee, to the last, was a marvel of sound physical development; his frame was as solid as oak, and stood the strain of exhausting marches, loss of sleep, hunger, thirst, heat, and cold, without failing him.