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writes of the Scottish hero: “Robert Bruce, to express much in a few words, was undoubtedly, in every point of view, a great man, and one to whom, from the heroic ages even to these times, we shall find few comparable in every species of virtue.
As he was brave in war, so he was moderate in peace; and although unexpected success and a constant flow of victory, after fortune was satiated, or rather fatigued with his sufferings, elevated him to the most splendid pinnacle of glory, yet he appears to me far more admirable in adversity.
What strength of mind did he display when assailed at once by so many misfortunes; he not only was not broken, but not even bent.
Whose constancy would it not have shaken to have had a wife captive, four heroic brothers cruelly murdered, his friends afflicted with every species of distress; they who escaped death, robbed and fugitives, and he himself not only stripped of an ample patrimony, but of a kingdom, by the most powerful, active and ablest prince of the age?
Yet, beset with all these calamities at once, and reduced to the extremities of want, never did he despair, or do or say anything unworthy of a king. * * * At last, at the close of life, when a grievous distemper was added to the troubles of old age, he retained so much self-possession that he arranged the present state of the kingdom, and provided for the tranquility of his posterity.
With justice was his death lamented by his people, not only as that of an upright king, but of a loving father.”
With a few slight alterations, this passage written over 300 years ago of Robert Bruce, would seem to have been written only ten years ago of Robert Lee, the greatest soldier and the highest type of the chivalric gentleman of the age in which he lived.
Authorities: Douglas' Baronage and Peerage of Scotland. Buchanan's History of Scotland. Chalmer's “Caledonia.”
Anderson's “Royal Genealogies.”
Hume's and Knight's Histories of England. Strickland's Queens of England.
Campbell's History of Virginia.
Richmond, VA. 1881.
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