He made indeed no pretensions to oratory; he had never been trained in its arts; but his mind was broad and highly cultured, he had a vast fund of vigorous common sense, and he expressed himself readily and pointedly.  With these faculties he would in time have taken rank as a strong debater.

While broadly patriotic, he had at the same time a high sense of obligation to his immediate constituency, and he was patient to a remarkable degree.  His district, you will remember, Mr. Speaker, lay just beyond the Potomac.

It was an easy matter for his constituents to come to the Capitol, and naturally many of them sought office at his hands.  I sat near him in the Fifty-first Congress.  Often have I known him to be carded out a dozen times a day; and if he ever expressed himself to me as worried by these interruptions he never failed to show by what he said that his annoyance arose not so much from the importunities of his friends as from his inability to serve them.

In address he was remarkably pleasing.  Indeed, his manner was so genial, so pleasant, so hearty and sincere, that the memory of his kindly greeting will not be forgotten until the whole generation of his friends shall pass away.  Who is there among his associates on this floor that will ever cease to remember him as, morning after morning in the springtime, he came into this Hall, bringing from his home a basket of roses to distribute among his friends?  He was not seeking popularity.  Such a thought had not occurred to him, nor did it enter into the mind of anyone here.  He simply loved his friends, and he loved flowers just as he loved all things beautiful and true.

Such a man could not but be, as Gen. LEE was, a model brother, husband, and father.  In all his life nothing was more lovely and beautiful than his family relations.

He had about him none of the arts of the demagogue; he was always true to himself, and therefore never false to any man.  His whole walk and conversation illustrated that he was the worthy son of his noble father; that from his youth up he had profited by the precepts and example of that illustrious chieftain, who declared, in those memorable words already quoted by my eloquent friend [Mr. Tucker], that duty was the sublimest word in the English language.  And, Mr. Speaker, let me say that the idea conveyed by this word duty, as taught by the father and practiced by the son, was far higher than that ideal, lofty though it was, expounded by philosophers like Plato and Cicero.  With the Lees duty meant Christian duty.

With all these characteristics Gen. LEE could not but grow and continue to grow as he did in power and influence in a body like this; and had he been spared for that long career in this Hall hoped for by his friends he would have risen to eminence as a legislator.

But this was not to be.  He has passed away from us forever.

When such a man dies out from among us, let critics cavil as they may about time wasted in memorial addresses.  We should do violence to our own feelings did we not pause to honor his memory; we should do wrong to the American people, whose heritage they are, did we not spread before them the lessons of his life, that the whole country may venerate his virtues and the youth of the land may emulate his example.