Reunion of Virginia Division, A. N. V. Association 215
have never seen a strong religious sentiment so generally prevalent as I find among them."*
The religious character of Lee and Jackson are well known. - The incidents of Jackson, as an elder in the Presbyterian church, himself administering the most solemn rites of his church, and of Lee for- bidding his staff to disturb an impromptu prayer-meeting that stop- ped their way when hurrying to the fierce battle in the Wilderness are familiar, and have gone into history. Our dashing, brilliant cavalry leader. General Stuart, when he came to die could quietly say: " I am resigned if it be God's will, but I should like to see my wife. But God's will be done , " and General Lee in announcing his death in orders, could say of him to his fellow-soldiers: "To military capacity of a high order he added the brightest graces of a pure life, sustained by the Christian's faith and hope." f
Ours was an army of Headly Vicars, Outrams and Havelocks.
Lord Brougham, in one of his historical sketches, touchingly de- scribes the relations between Lord St. Vincent and his great lieutenant, the hero of the Nile — Lord Nelson. He tells how the illustrious hero always acknowledged, with the most affectionate gratitude, how much his victory of the Nile was owing to the grand operation of his chief in fitting up the expedition, and for whom he felt and ever testified the most profound veneration. Nor was anything more distasteful to his truly noble and generous nature than the attempts of flatterers who would pay their court to himself by overrating his services at St. Vincent, and ascribing to him the glory of that memor- able day. On the other hand. Lord St. Vincent knew all the while how attempts had been made by Lord Nelson's flatterers to set him up as the true hero of the fourteenth of February, but never for an instant did the feelings towards Nelson cross his mind by which infe- rior natures would have been swayed. In spite of all these invidious arts he magnanimously sent Nelson to Aboukir, and by unparalleled exertion, which he, Vincent, alone could make, armed him with the means of eclipsing his own fame. The mind of the historian, says Lord Brougham, weary with recounting the deeds of human base- ness, and mortified with contemplating the frailty of illustrious men, gathers a soothing refreshment from such scenes as these, where kin- dred genius, exciting only mutual admiration and honest rivalry, gives birth to no feeling of jealousy or envy.
- Marginalia, page 3.
t Memoirs of the Confederate War — Von Borcke, pages 313, 315.
