“We discussed a variety of other topics, and, at eleven o’clock when I rose to go, he begged me to stay on, as he found the nights full long.  His son, General Custis Lee, who had distinguished himself much during the war, but whom I had not the good fortune of meeting, is the only one of his family at present with him at Lexington, where he occupies the position of a professor in the Military Institute of Virginia.  This college had 250 cadets in it when the war broke out, General ‘Stonewall’ Jackson being one of the professors.  At one moment in the war, when the Federals were advancing steadily up the Shenandoah Valley, these youths (from 16 to 22 years of age) were marched to join the Confederate Army, and did good service.  In one battle at Newmarket, of which I shall have occasion to speak later in my letters, they distinguished themselves in a conspicuous way under the leadership of Colonel Shipp, who is still their commandant.  By a brilliant charge, they contributed, in a great measure, to turn the tide of affairs, losing nine of their number killed and more than forty wounded.  General Hunter, on a subsequent occasion, when occupying Lexington with a body of Federal troops, quartered his men in the Military Institute for several days, and, on leaving, had the building—­a very handsome and extensive one—­fired in numerous places, completely destroying all but the external walls, which now stand.  The professors’ houses stood in detached positions, and these, too, with the house of Mr. Letcher, a former governor of the State, he also burnt to the ground.  The Washington College, the presidency of which General Lee now holds, they also ransacked, destroying everything it contained, and were preparing it for the flames, to which they were with difficulty restrained from devoting it by earnest representations of its strictly educational nature.”