The cortege moved through the main streets of the city, and then returned to the Capitol. When the hearse reached the steps of the Capitol, the pall-bearers, headed by Gen. Longstreet, bore the corpse into the hall of the lower house of the Congress, where it was placed upon a species of altar, draped with snowy white, before the Speaker's chair. The coffin was still enfolded with the white, blue, and red, of the Confederate flag. Here the face and bust of the dead was uncovered; and the expectant thousands now claimed the melancholy satisfaction of obtaining the last look of the beloved commander. It was estimated that twenty thousand persons filed through the hall to view the body as it lay in state for the greater part of the day. In recognition of the solemn occasion all business in the city was suspended during the day, and the theatres were closed at night. The next morning the remains were placed on a special train for Lexington, in charge of a becoming escort of officials and citizens, and were finally deposited there, in the village burying-ground, with nothing but a green mound to mark the place of final rest. Of the last tributes of a people's love to Jackson, the Richmond Examiner said: "All the poor honours that Virginia, sorely troubled and pressed hard, could afford her most glorious and beloved son, having been offered to his mortal part in this capital, the funeral cortége of the famous Jackson left it yesterday morning, on the long road to 'Lexington, in the Valley of Virginia.' It was the last wish of the dead man to be buried there, amid the scenes familiar to his eyes through the years of his manhood, obscure and unrecorded, but perhaps filled with recollections to him not less affecting than those connected with the brief but crowded period passed upon a grander stage. This desire, expressed at such a time, demanded and has received unhesitating compliance. Yet many regret that his remains will not rest in another spot. Near this city is a hill crowned by secular oaks, washed by the waters of the river, identified with what is great in the State's history from the days of Elizabeth to the present hour, which has been well selected as the place of national honour for the illustrious dead of Virginia. There sleep Monroe and Tyler. We have neither a Westminster nor a Pantheon, but all would wish to see the best that we could give conferred on Jackson. Hereafter, Virginia will build him a stately tomb, and strike a medal to secure the memory of his name beyond the reach of accident, if accident were possible. But it is not possible; nor is a monument necessary to cause the story of this man's life to last when bronze shall have corroded and marble crumbled," CHAPTER XIX. Review of Gen. Jackson's services and character.-True nature of his ambition.-The value of glory.-Religious element in Gen. Jackson's character.-Peculiarity of his religious habits.-Anecdotes.-Want of natural amiability.-Harshness of manner towards his officers.-His severe idea of war.-Destructiveness.-His readiness to forgive.-A touching personal incident.-His self-possession as a mark of "genius."-His military faculty not a partial one.-European estimates of his career. A lesson to Northern insolence and rancour. WE have said Gen. Jackson was a born soldier. This furnishes a larger and more thorough insight into his character than any other observation. We use the term soldier, not merely as denoting an aptitude to arms, or even the possession of the military genius, but we include the common association with the profession of an ardent love for glory, a thirst for distinction, a peculiar ambition, that values a name in history above the coarser gifts of popularity and power. An ambition so pure and ideal ran perceptibly through the whole of Jackson's wonderful career. His passion for renown was not of that common type that seeks the tangible gifts of power, and enjoys the evanescent noises of popu larity. He had not that order of mind that mistakes "a dunce's puff for fame," and the penny-a-lines of the newspaper for the inscriptions of history. His was an ambition that valued "skilled commendation," and was not entirely insensible to the praise of his contemporaries; but which mostly and chiefly prized the name in history—an aspiration after the ideal, and not the vulgar hunt for notoriety and its gifts. Such an ambition is consonant with the most refined spirit of Christianity; it resides in the depths of great minds; and it easily escapes observation, because those moved by it are generally silent men, of mysterious air and mechanical manners, living within themselves, conscious that few can enter into sympathy with them, and constantly practising the art of impene trable reserve. The world, in fact, often deceives itself in this regard, and has mistaken many prominent actors on its theatre for emotionless and ascetic men, deaf to praise-the mere cold figures in a round of duty-who yet have been inwardly consumed by the fires of ambition, and have made daily sacrifice on its altars. There has been a good deal of slighting philosophy about the emptiness of historic fame; a marked tendency in a superficial and materialistic school of morals to caricature it as a shadow, and ridicule it as the object of a human life. We reject this philosophy with infinite contempt and irrepressible disgust. Nations have fought for titles to fame as above all other objects of contest, and in this have represented but the aspirations for glory in the breasts of the individuals composing the society. These aspirations are given to us by the Creator; and so far from the love of glory being a frailty, it may be declared to be of the very dignity of hu man nature. The writer recollects a pretty story translated from the French, which was published as a lesson for the times, in a Richmond newspaper in the first months of the war. A young man uses some shallow and plausible phrases about glory being an "empty sound," "the bubble reputation," etc. His father, a worn veteran, reproves him; speaks in tender and reverential language of the great wars, teaches the lesson that the glory of a nation, that all the best and sentimental parts of civilization, proceed from its soldiers; and declares that the mutilations and scars of his body are dear as his children; ornaments of his age, tokens of his manhood, letters of his nobility, even more than stars and crosses of diamonds in the eyes of his countrymen.* * The same journal that contained this early lesson of the war, had this to say in summing up the results of the third year of the contest: "But this year is not without glorious consolations. The unaided strength and unbacked courage of the nation redeemed its fortunes from the dust, plucked up its drowning honour by the locks, and tore from the very jaws of death the right to live forever. History will hereafter show no page illuminated with more enduring glory than those which record the heroic events of the circle of months which end with this day. In these months of a forlorn republic, a people covered with the opprobrium and prejudice of the world, have secured a place in the Pantheon of remembered nations far above the most famous. Neither the story of Greece, or Rome, or France, or England, can bear a fair parallel with our own brief but most eventful narrative. Is not this triumphant crown of victory worth the awful price? The question will be answered according to the temperament of the reader. Many think, with Sir John, that honour cannot cure a broken leg, and that all the national glory that has been won in battle since Greeks fought Trojans, will not compensate the loss of a beef or But whatever may be the precise worth of martial glory, and however it may be measured by a coarse commercial philosophy, it is certain that it was the dominant passion of Jackson's life, and equally certain that it detracted nothing from the beauty and harmony of his character, and made him none the less a man or a Christian. The spirit that courted the greatest amount of danger in the Mexican War for the greatest amount of glory, showed the same tendency in the higher career of arms from Manassas to Chancellorsville. It is said, that when Jackson was once asked if he had felt no trepidation when he made most extraordinary exposures of his person in the battles in Mexico, he replied, that the only anxiety of which he was conscious in any of these engagements, was a fear lest he should not meet danger enough to make his conduct under it as conspicuous as he desired; and as the danger grew greater, he rejoiced in it as his opportunity for distinction. This sentiment of the true soldier survived to Jackson's last moments, however emotions of piety may have been mingled with the ardour and joy of the warriour. The religious element in Gen. Jackson's character has come in for an undue share of public attention; and indeed one of his biographers has committed the mistake of taking the religion of the man as the stand-point of the entire view, forgetting that the interest of the religious life is merely auxiliary to the interest which Stonewall Jackson has excited in the world as a master of war. There are other considerations which make Jackson's piety of very partial interest. It is true that he was an enthusiast in religion, that he was wonderfully attentive in his devotions, and that prayer was as the breath of his nostrils. To one of his friends he declared that he had cultivated the habit of "praying without ceasing," and connecting a silent testimony of devotion with every familiar act of the day. "Thus," he said, "when I take my meals, there is the grace. When I take a draught of water, I always pause, as a dollar. But the young, the brave, the generous will everywhere judge that the exercise and exhibition in this year of the noblest virtues has been more than worth the misfortunes which have marked its progress. "Sound the clarion, fill the fife; To a sensual world proclaim, |