Brilliant service of Magruder's batteries in the Mexican War.-Interesting inci- dent at Contreras.-He makes the tour of Europe.-Offers his sword to Vir- ginia. Battle of Bethel.-Important and critical services on the Peninsula. -How he deceived McClellan, and defied his "grand army."-Another des- perate situation in front of Richmond.-Transferred to Texas.—Recapture of Galveston.-Affair of Sabine Pass.-Address to the people of Texas.-The enemy compared to "the ravenous cat."-Gen. Magruder resists a surrender -His exile in Mexico.-The tribute of a companion-in-arms to his accom- GENERAL ROBERT EDWARD LEE. CHAPTER I. Standards of human greatness.-Three classes of great men.-Nature and peculiarity of genius.-A second order of greatness.-General Lee, as in the third class of great men. Key to his character. HUMAN greatness is neither a mystery nor an accident. There is a class of minds, envious or ignorant, which insist that the greatness of men is without reference to any well-settled orders of merit; that it is often the fruit of chance; that it is subject to no well-defined rule or analysis; and that fame is a lawless and irregular thing. We dissent from this view, and disclaim any share in its self-complacency. We believe that human greatness, as interpreted by intelligent fame among mankind, is regulated by wellknown laws, is subject to a clear analysis, and is capable of a precise definition. Especially in modern civilized society, with its multitude of concerns, its intricate organization, and its constant and characteristic multiplication of restraints and difficulties upon the self-assertion of the individual, it is impossible for a man to obtain anything like permanent fame without the possession of some substantial and well-defined merit, or some extraordinary quality. To be sure, in the experience of every people there are hasty judgments of the mob, fits of fickle admiration, short triumphs of charlatanism, ephemera of the newspaper. But equally certain it is that no man succeeds to real and lasting fame, and obtains a permanent place in the regard of his fellows, unless he has some visible mark upon him, some true excellence, and only after a severe test and a precise measure have been applied to those qualities in which he asserts an extraordinary character. That character may be one of great virtues or of brilliant vices; we do not discuss the moral question here; we only insist that the man designated for historical reputation, and the fee of fame, must have something that really distinguishes him from his fellows. Affectation and pretension can never accomplish a permanent name. There is no such thing as being great by accident, and enjoying fame without good reason therefor. Weak men may sometimes make undue noise, and occupy for a little while eminences to which they do not belong; but the sober judgment of mankind soon passes upon the pretender, and reduces him to his proper position. It is the certain and inevitable law of history. Mind, like water, will find its level. We may appear to live in a great confusion of names, amid disordered currents of popular fame, in storms of unjust and turbulent opinion; but after all, we may be sure that there is an ultimate order, that the reputations of men will be finally assigned them by exact rules, and that those only will enter the temple of History who have real titles, by extraordinary virtues or by extraordinary vices, to its places. That excellence which men entitle Greatness, so far from being any peculiar occasion of confusion of mind, may be readily subjected to analysis, and the classes of fame be separated, with reference to the qualities which obtain it. In the first place, we have a distinction among mankind, and a title to fame in the rare possession of genius. The subtile excellence of mind that bears this name is difficult of definition. But its characteristics are easily recognized and unfailing. We call him the man of genius, who, by a quality or gift superiour to reason, reaches the truth, seizes upon it without the intermediate process by which the ordinary man arrives at it; obtains conclusions by the flashes of intuition; perceives things by a subtile sense in which truth is discovered without the formula of an argument, and almost without the consciousness of a mental operation. It is for the metaphysician to attempt the definition of this rare quality of mind, and determine the relations between reason and intuition. But from what we have said of the characteristics of genius we may readily recognize it: the rapidity of its action, the brilliancy of its execution, the intellectual certainty of all its plans, the directness of its methods, and the decisive air of its manners are peculiar, and cannot escape notice. There is another peculiarity of genius. It is that its particular employment, the department in which it displays itself, is determined by accident; that it is universal in its application, and capable of excelling in all professions of life, in all arts and sciences, in every domain of mind. Genius contains in itself. all excellences, and is bound to show itself in some direction or other. The man who is by genius a great General would also have been, had such directions been given to his life, a great poet, or a great mathematician, or a great politician-an ornament of the State, or a light of science. Genius is bound to assert itself, and circumstances will determine its direction. A certain reviewer in the pages of a British periodical has declared that the Great Napoleon was only the product of a peculiar French society, the fruit of the exceptional times in which he lived; and that had he been an Englishman, and served in the British army, he would probably never have been known but as a brilliant colonel of artillery. But this view is superficial and silly. The scholarly and cultivated historian has quite a different judgment from that of the writer in the shallow pages of a magazine. The universality of genius is illimitable, its declarations of itself irrepressible; and we are to believe that Napoleon, if he had chosen, instead of the profession of arms, the peaceful pursuits of science and philosophy, would still have been the great man, would have imprinted the age with great discoveries, and would have taken rank with Bacon, Newton, and other luminaries in the world of letters and pure intellect. There is a second order of greatness, lower than that of genius, but often mistaken for it in the opinions of the vulgar. It is some special excellence which comes from some faculty in excess, some inordinate development of a single power or property of mind. This is indeed the most usual type of human greatness, occurring far more frequently than that founded on genius, or that proceeding, as we shall hereafter notice, from a certain rare and full combination of virtues and powers in a single mind. The largest class of those whom the world calls great represent single ideas, ar specialties and have a well-defined vocation, taken out of whiel they are no longer remarkable. It seems here indeed that nature has introduced a certain law of economy in its distribution of powers, giving to us special missions, and raising up for the accomplishment of every particular idea the man for the occasion. A third class of great men in history, not remarkable for genius, and not famous for any special adaptation, rest their reputation on a certain combination, a just mixture of qualities, a perfect balance of character at once rare and admirable. This type of greatness may not be a very brilliant one, but it is certainly not a low one. It is seldom that we perceive in one person the full, rotund development of mind, a perfect harmony of character, the precise adjustment of the virtues. We may hesitate in a certain sense in designating such a one as a great man. The very fulness and harmony of such a character precludes brilliancy; and it is remarkable that this full and well-balanced order of mind is generally wrought from a sense of duty-the only motive indeed which embraces all the powers and dispositions of the mind-and partakes but little of ambition, which usually cultivates partial developments of character, and distorts the picture. The excellence and charm of the character we describe is its nice mixture. The man who is suc cessful and famous from a happy combination of qualities may not attract the mysteries of hero-worship; he will lack the vigorous selfishness that puts strong imprints on the pages of history; he will not realize that fierce and romantic theory of greatness which contends that the great man must be cruel, unscrupulous, monstrous, sacrificing all means to one end; he may be more the object of admiration than affection; but after all, he is the great man and not the agreeable commonplace. Apart from any charm in the moral aspects of this character, there is a steady intellectual glow in the contemplation of the man well-developed, and tempered in all his parts, deficient in nothing, with all his powers and dispositions knit in harmony, presenting a single majestic picture of human nature. The brilliant light may startle us for a while; but we shall not the less regard the full-orbed symbol of greatness. The meteor which streams across the vision, the comet which writes its red hieroglyph on the blue page of heaven, may be taken as symbols of certain human fame; but are there not others more quiet, and yet as majestic, in the full round orb of day as it shines on the meridian, or blazes through the broken storm on the horizon, amid clouds "At sunset, stranded, firing far Their dull distress-guns!" |