deed futile. Instead, he aims simply to facilitate to others, even a little, what he has himself found to be the most fascinating and inexhaustible of pursuits, the study of the human soul. In this study, if there were complete finality, if you could exhaust the book, even any one particular book, even your own, and shut it with a snap, half the fascination would be gone. The wisest of us hardly dares say, with the soothsayer in Antony and Cleopatra,—
"In nature's infinite book of secrecy
A little I can read."
In some of these Confederate portraits there may be thought to be a note of undue harshness. All I can say is that I have endeavored to display and to insist upon the high and fine qualities manifest in every case. To pass over or slight the shadows seemed to me neither just nor wise. As to any partiality in the matter, after careful self-examination, I can discover no motive which could lead me to anything of the sort, unless it were an undue desire to exalt Lee. Of this I am not conscious, and, if I have not been misled by some such influence, I feel that the net result of careful study of Lee's companions in arms is to bring out more than ever the serene elevation of his greatness. Some of them were, perhaps, more brilliant than he, some greater orators, some profounder thinkers, some even as capable soldiers. Not one approaches him in those moral qualities, which, as Mr. Adams has justly pointed out, place him, as they do Washington, far above those who aided him in his terrible struggle.
