Fitzhugh Lee, General Lee

The college pledge was sacredly kept, and a sleeping marble recumbent statue of exquisite workmanship, the production of Valentine, a Virginia sculptor, after “Rauch's figure of Louise of Prussia,” is a superb monument to the memory of its president. The Washington and Lee, a great university, under the wise management of General Lee's eldest son, has linked two names which spring spontaneously to every mind. Of these two men, exemplars of a country's character, born almost a century apart, but similar in the history of their boyhood, earnest, grave, studious, alike in noble carriage and commanding dignity, it has been said that in the remarkable combination and symmetry of their intellectual qualities-all so equal, so well developed, no faculty of the mind overlapping any other-you are almost persuaded to deny them greatness, because no single attribute of the mind was projected upon itself. Well may Virginia be proud of sons who shine upon the pages of the world's history “like binary stars which open their glory and shed their splendor on the darkness of the world.”

In Virginia's capital city now stand two splendid equestrian statues to George Washington and Robert E. Lee. Riding side by side in calm majesty, they are henceforth contemporaries in all the ages to come. The mother State mourned for the departed soldier, and her General Assembly passed a bill making January 19th, the birthday of General Robert E. Lee, a legal holiday in Virginia. In the universal mourning for him the sympathies of the world first flew to the smitten family. The final parting from her husband after a most happy married life was a great shock to Mrs. Lee. She had been a sufferer for years from rheumatism, unable to move without assistance, and was described at that time as having “a sad but noble countenance, her features much resembling those of her great-grandmother Martha, the wife of Washington, her expression firm, her eyes beautiful and sparkling with the uncommon intelligence which marks her conversation, her almost snowy-white, fine, soft hair, in waves and curls framing her full forehead. She sits in her widow's cap a grand and lovely picture, combining in itself much of ”