“I can never forget the deferential homage paid this great citizen by even the Federal soldiers, as with uncovered heads they contemplated in mute admiration this now captive hero as he rode through their ranks.  Impressed forever, daguerreotyped on my heart is that last parting scene with that handful of heroes still crowding around him.  Few indeed were the words then spoken, but the quivering lip and the tearful eye told of the love they bore him, in symphonies more eloquent than any language can describe.  Can I ever forget?  No, never can I forget the words which fell from his lips as I rode beside him amid the defeated, dejected, and weeping soldiery, when, turning to me, he said, ’I could wish that I was numbered among the fallen in the last battle;’ but oh! as he thought of the loss of the cause—­of the many dead scattered over so many fields, who, sleeping neglected, with no governmental arms to gather up their remains—­sleeping neglected, isolated, and alone, beneath the weeping stars, with naught but their soldiers’ blankets about them!—­oh! as these emotions swept over his great soul, he felt that he would have laid him down to rest in the same grave where lay buried the common hope of his people.  But Providence willed it otherwise.  He rests now forever, my countrymen, his spirit in the bosom of that Father whom he so faithfully served, his body beside the river whose banks are forever memorable, and whose waters are vocal with the glories of his triumphs.  No sound shall ever wake him to martial glory again; no more shall he lead his invincible lines to victory; no more shall we gaze upon him and draw from his quiet demeanor lessons of life.  But oh! it is a sweet consolation to us, my countrymen, who loved him, that no more shall his bright spirit be bowed down to earth with the burdens of the people’s wrongs.  It is sweet consolation to us that his last victory, through faith in his crucified Redeemer, is the most transcendently glorious of all his triumphs.  At this very hour, while we mourn here, kind friends are consigning the last that remains of our hero to his quiet sleeping-place, surrounded by the mountains of his native State—­mountains the autumnal glory of whose magnificent forests to-day seem but habiliments of mourning.  In the Valley, the pearly dew-drops seem but tears of sadness upon the grasses and flowers.  Let him rest!  And now as he has gone from us, and as we regard him in all the aspects of his career and character and attainments as a great captain, ranking among the first of any age; as a patriot, whose sacrificing devotion to his country ranks him with Washington; as a Christian, like Havelock, recognizing his duty to his God above every other earthly consideration, with a native modesty that refused to appropriate the glory of his own, and which surrounds now his entire character and career with a halo of unfading light; with an integrity of life and a sacred regard for truth which no man dare assail; with a fidelity to principle which no misfortune could shake—­he must ever stand peerless among men in the estimation of Christendom, this representative son of the South, Robert E. Lee, of Virginia.”