earnestness; and, wherever he went, young girls and children received him with their brightest smiles.  The august fame of the great soldier, who has now passed away, no doubt renders these memories of personal interviews with him dear to many.  Even the most trifling incidents are cherished and kept fresh by repetition; and the writer of these pages recalls at the moment one of these trifles, which may possibly interest some readers.  There stood and still stands an ancient and hospitable homestead on the south bank of the Opequan, the hearts of whose inmates, one and all, were ardently with the South in her struggle.  Soon after Sharpsburg, General Lee one day visited the old manor-house crowning the grassy hill and overshadowed by great oaks; Generals Jackson, Longstreet, and Stuart, accompanied him, and the reception which he met with, though we cannot describe it, was such as would have satisfied the most exacting.  The children came to him and held out their small hands, the ladies divided their attention between him and the beloved “hero of the Valley,” Jackson; and the lady of the manor could only express her sense of the great honor of receiving such company, by declaring, with a smile, that the dinner resembled the famous breakfast at Tillietudlem in Scott’s “Old Mortality.”  General Lee highly enjoyed this, and seemed disposed to laugh when the curious fact was pointed out to him that he had seated himself at table in a chair with an open-winged United States eagle delineated upon its back.  The result of this visit, it appeared afterward, was a sentiment of great regard and affection for the general personally by all at the old country-house.  Old and young were charmed by his grave sweetness and mild courtesy, and doubtless he inspired the same sentiment in other places.

His headquarters were at this time in a field some miles from Winchester.  An Englishman, who visited him there, described the general and his surroundings with accuracy, and, from the account printed in Blackwood’s Magazine, we quote the following sentences: 

“In visiting the headquarters of the Confederate generals, but particularly those of General Lee, any one accustomed to see European armies in the field cannot fail to be struck with the great absence of all the ‘pomp and circumstance of war’ in and around their encampments.  Lee’s headquarters consisted of about seven or eight pole-tents, pitched with their backs to a stake fence, upon a piece of ground so rocky that it was unpleasant to ride over it, its only recommendation being a little stream of good water which flowed close by the general’s tent.  In front of the tents were some three four-wheeled wagons, drawn up without any regularity, and a number of horses roamed loose about the field.  The servants, who were, of course, slaves, and the mounted soldiers, called ‘couriers,’ who always accompany each general of division in the field, were unprovided with tents, and slept in or under the wagons.