reply, ’It were strange indeed if human virtue were not at least as strong as human calamity.’  This is the key to his life—­the belief that trials and strength, suffering and consolation, come alike from God.  Obedience to duty was ever his ruling principle.  Infallibility is not claimed for him in the exercise of his judgment in deciding what duty was.  But what he believed duty to command, that he performed without thought of how he would appear in the performance.  In the judgment of many he may have mistaken his duty when he decided that it did not require him to draw his sword ’against his home, his kindred, and his children.’  But Lee was no casuist or politician; he was a soldier.  ‘All that he would do highly that would he do holily.’  He taught the world that the Christian and the gentleman could be united in the warrior.  It was not when in pomp and power—­when he commanded successful legions and led armies to victories—­but when in sorrow and privation he assumed the instruction and guidance of the youth of Virginia, laying the only true foundation upon which a republic can rest, the Christian education of its youth—­that he reaped the rich harvest of a people’s love.  Goodness was the chief attribute of Lee’s greatness.  Uniting in himself the rigid piety of the Puritan with the genial, generous impulses of the cavalier, he won the love of all with whom he came in contact, from the thoughtless child, with whom it was ever his delight to sport, to the great captain of the age, with whom he fought all the hard-won battles of Mexico.  Some may believe that the world has given birth to warriors more renowned, to rulers more skilled in statecraft, but all must concede that a purer, nobler man never lived.  What successful warrior or ruler, in ancient or modern times, has descended to his grave amid such universal grief and lamentation as our Lee?  Caesar fell by the hands of his own beloved Brutus, because, by his tyranny, he would have enslaved Rome.  Frederick the Great, the founder of an empire, became so hated of men, and learned so to despise them, that he ordered his ‘poor carcass,’ as he called it, to be buried with his favorite dogs at Potsdam.  Napoleon reached his giddy height by paths which Lee would have scorned to tread, only to be hurled from his eminence by all the powers of Europe which his insatiate ambition had combined against him.  Wellington, the conqueror of Napoleon, became the leader of a political party, and lived to need the protection of police from a mob.  Even our own Washington, whose character was as high above that of the mere warrior and conqueror as is the blue vault of heaven above us to the low earth we tread beneath our feet, was libelled in life and slandered in death.  Such were the fates of the most successful captains and warriors of the world.  For four long years Lee occupied a position not less prominent than that of the most distinguished among them.  The eyes of the civilized world watched his every movement and