which arrived nearly on a vertical course. But other matter, which descended less rapidly to the surface, produced a precisely contrary effect, and as it settled down in the solar atmosphere, displacing and driving outwards the intensely bright solar clouds, it appeared to cool the underlying matter in such sort as to cause it to shine less resplendently than elsewhere. But all round a region thus cooled, intense eruptive action was invariably excited, every spot we visited being literally circled about by prominences of greater or less size. Some of these eruptions were so amazingly active that the ejected matter (which seemed to come from an immeasurable depth) was propelled with a velocity even exceeding that of any of the matter which arrived from without; so that we could not but conclude that the matter thus disgorged was driven wholly and for ever away from the sun. There were signs which led us to believe that intense electrical action was excited during these eruptions, and it does not seem unlikely that such action may afford the true explanation of the radiations seen in the outer solar envelopes.

Although not liable to any sense of fatigue, and impervious to any of those risks which seemed to multiply around us, we began to be bewildered by the succession of wonders which had been revealed to us. Y., in particular, wished to escape from the

fierce light and the dazzling colors, as weil as from the inconceivable uproar and tumult, which we had now experienced, for some hours in reality, but for an age to our perceptions. X. was desirous of penetrating deeply beneath the photosphere, in order to obtain an answer to some of those questions which have lately arisen respecting the condition of the sun's interior. He suffered himself, however, to be overruled, though exacting from us a promise that this, our first voyage to the sun, should not be the last.

Shall I tell you the thought that chiefly occupied us as we returned to the earth? On all sides were countless myriads of stars; in front, the mighty convolution of the galaxy, infinitely complex in star-texture; directly below, the great Magellanic cloud, full of stars and star-clusters; suns every where, of every order of magnitude and splendor. We had wondered at the beautiful spectacle presented by the sun of our own system; but now that we had visited that sun, and had learned something of its amazing might and activity, the thought seemed awful, nay, almost appalling, that all those suns, as well as the unnumbered millions which we could not perceive, were of like nature—that the infinitely wonderful scene we had just beheld was thus infinitely multiplied throughout the infinite universe of the Almighty.

MORE than a year has passed away since the death of General Lee. In ordinary times such an event could hardly have happened without reviving, if only for a moment, much of the eager interest with which, between 1861 and 1865, the Old World watched the Titanic Civil War of the New. But during the October of 1870, when General Lee breathed his last, the siege of Paris absorbed the thoughts and engrossed the attention of civilized mankind. Little or no notice has therefore been taken in England of the death of one who, when his career, character, and military genius are better known and understood, will, in spite of his defeat, be pronounced the greatest soldier, with two exceptions, that any English-speaking nation has ever produced. Upon the other side of the Atlantic circumstances have conspired to obscure the great deeds and spotless purity of the noblest son to whom the North-American continent has hitherto given birth. A Life of General Robert E. Lee" has indeed appeared, from the pen of Mr. John Esten Cooke, upon which we propose to make a few comments; but it can in no sense be regarded as more than an adumbration of the man whom it professes to delineate. Public expectation on the other side of the Atlantic anticipates much from a biography, already too long delayed, of which Colonel Marshall, who for four years served at General Lee's right hand in the position which corresponds in European armies to our Chief of Staff, is to be the author. But in both sections of the reconstructed Union the passions and animosities of the American War are still sɔ much alive that it is a political necessity for General Lee's conquerors to darken his fame and sneer at his achievements.

Nothing can be fairer than the reasons by which General Badeau explains the secession of General Lee and his Southern fellow-officers. To many of them the struggle to decide whether their State or the Union claimed priority of allegiance was no less painful than the struggle-so beautifully described in Clarendon's "History of the English Rebellion"-which raged in the breast of Falkland. "When there was any overture or hope of peace,"

says Lord Clarendon, "Falkland would be exceedingly solicitous to press any thing which he thought might promote it; and, sitting among his friends, often after a deep silence and frequent sighs, would with a shrill and sad accent ingeminate the word Peace, Peace; and would passionately profess that the very agony of the war, and the view of the calamities and desolation the kingdom did and must endure, took his sleep from him, and would shortly break his heart." No one who served by General Lee's side during the war, or who had occasional opportunities of conversing with him during the five years of life which remained after his surrender at Appomattox Court-House, can entertain any doubt that he suffered no less agony of heart than the young and accomplished Royalist who died on the field of Newbury. But to brand him with infamy, and call him a traitor and a recreant because he deemed it his duty to fight for the State which sent him to West Point and paid for his education, is unworthy of so brave and sensible a man as General Schenck. Even in the report of Lieutenant-General U. S. Grant upon the armies of the United States in 1864 and 1865, he has but one faint word of approbation to bestow upon the adversary who, having fought with unshaken fortitude and self-denial throughout the war, became the most patient and loyal of citizens when his sword was surrendered. "General Lee's great influence throughout the whole South," says his conqueror, "caused his example to be followed; and to-day the result is, that the armies lately under his leadership are at their homes, desiring peace and quiet, and their arms are in the hands of our ordnance officers." The patience, humility, and moderation of General Lee during the five closing years of his life extorted frequent admiration from his late antagonists, but have hitherto won from them no concessions to his crushed and oppressed brethren and sisters in the South. The remnant of the armies over which he was supreme "desired peace and quiet" as intensely as their Northern conquerors; but after they had for three years been ruled by the sword, and despoiled by "carpetbaggers" and negroes, it was natural that

the discontent of a brave and proud people should here and there break out in a few spasmodic flutterings of disaffection. In one of his speeches to his constituents, Mr. Grant Duff, himself an ardent Northerner, told them that

"Reconstruction is the readmission of the seceding States to political communion with the States which remained true to the Union, and the restoration to them of those powers of self-government which, forfeited by the war, had been replaced since their defeat by military rule. But how was this to be done? The majority of the United States Legislature decided that each of the States should choose a new constitution for itself, and that in choosing it the old planters, the mean whites,' and the ex-slaves should all have an equal voice; but that all the principal rebels, and the whites who would not take a test-oath, should be excluded. The effect of this has been, that constitutions for the Southern States have been prepared in the North, and voted at the South over the heads of white men by negro majorities." Mr. Anthony Trollope, whose Northern proclivities during the war were not less pronounced than those of Mr. Grant Duff or Professor Goldwin Smith, calls reconstruction, as understood and practiced by the Republican party—

"A provision for a war of races, with the express object of keeping down a people, in order that that people may be debarred from all political power in the empire. In Georgia, the black men, on those lines of reconstruction, would have the power of making all laws for the restraint of the white. But it has never been intended to intrust this power to the negroes; the intention is that, through the negroes, all political power, both State and Federal, shall be in the hands of members of Congress from the North-that the North shall have its heel upon the South, and that the conquered shall be subject to the conquerors. Never has there been a more terrible condition imposed upon a fallen people. For an Italian to feel an Austrian over him, for a Pole to feel a Russian over him, has been bad indeed; but it has been left for the political animosity of a Republican from the North-a man who himself rejects all contact with the negro-to subject the late Southern slave-owner to dominion from the African who was yesterday his slave."

The oppression of the South, which is to-day far worse than when these words of Mr. Trollope were written, wrung General Lee's affectionate heart as the loss of Calais weighed upon the spirits of our own Queen Mary. Lord Macaulay tells us that " no creature is so revengeful as a proud man who has humbled himself in vain;" but during the concluding years of General Lee's life, no symptoms of passion or vindictiveness were discernible in his daily bearing. He mourned over the abject and oppressed condition of SouthCarolina until death freed his soul from the suffering which crushed him. Mr. John Esten Cooke makes it abundantly evident that he died from a broken heart. But in order that the virtues of a singularly pure and noble character may not be unrecorded in England, we desire to follow Mr. Cooke through some of the most notable passages of his hero's life, and to do what in us lies to make Robert E. Lee's memory a precious possession wherever the English tongue is spoken.

"The Lees of Virginia," says the volume before us, "spring from an ancient and respectable family of Essex in England," whose ancestor came over to the fast-anchored isle with William the Conqueror. One member of this family, Lionel Lee, accompanied Richard Cœur de Lion to the Holy Land, and displayed special gallantry at the siege of Acre. The first of the Virginian Lees, Richard by name, was an ardent monarchist, and left the old country in the troubled times of King Charles the First. "It is not certainly known," says Mr. Cooke, "whether he sought refuge in Virginia after the failure of the King's cause, or was tempted to emigrate with a view to better his fortunes in the New World." Whatever may have been his motive in repairing to Virginia, Richard Lee undoubtedly brought with him from England a number of followers and servants, and took up extensive tracts of land in the Old Dominion. Among the manor-houses which he there built or commenced, was one at Stratford, in the Virginian county of Westmoreland-within which county George Washington himself was born. This house having subsequently been destroyed by fire, was rebuilt

Queen Anne herself having been a contributor to the fund subscribed in England and in the colony for its re-erection-and became at a later date the birthplace of

Richard Henry Lee, and of his distinguished son, Robert Edward. Richard Henry Lee, the father of the great Confederate general, was one of Washington's best subordinates; and under the sobriquet of "Light-Horse Harry," gained conspicuous fame as a cavalry general in the revolutionary war of the American colonies against England. In a letter written in 1789, George Washington conveys his "love and thanks" to Light-Horse Harry, whose admirable qualities as a soldier were always recapitulated with modest pride by his still greater son. In 1869 General R. E. Lee published a new edition of his father's" Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department," to which he prefixed an unostentatious life of its author. Richard Henry Lee was twice married; and by his second wife, Anne Hill Carter, he had three sons and two daughters-Charles Carter, Robert Edward, Smith, Anne, and Mildred. The old house at Stratford, wherein the great American soldier first saw the light, deserves a few passing words of comment. It is one of those Virginian manor-houses which so warmed the heart and kindled the fancy of William Makepeace Thackeray; for in one of these, he loved to say, that it would delight him to write the history, which he always contemplated but never executed, of the times of good Queen Anne. The bricks, pavingtiles, carvings, window-sashes, furniture, and decorations of these stately old country-houses, were all transported from England to the Old Dominion. English plasterers molded and spread the ceilings; English masons upraised the Italian mantelpieces which they brought with them across the Atlantic; English carpenters made fast the window-sashes, and set up the lintels of the doors. Their book-shelves were filled with the great English classics who flourished in the Augustan age of Queen Anne. Within the libraries of some of these houses Thackeray passed many hours, enraptured to find himself surrounded by the works of all the English authors who were most to his taste. There he again familiarized himself with the tender grace of Addison, the rugged force of Smollett; there he forgot the "wild relish and vicious exuberance of the too copious present" by bending over the pages of Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, Bolingbroke, Walsh, and Granville; and there for the first time he became acquainted with the "Memoirs

of Colonel Byrd of Westover," the founder, during George II.'s reign, of Virginia's beautiful capital at Richmond. The very bricks, paving-stones, and window-frames of Westover, Brandon, or Stratford, exhaled an atmosphere which was fragrant to his nostrils, and enabled him again to summon into fleshly existence those English worthies of whose literature he was so fond. There he loved to rehearse that Charles II. wore a coronation-robe of Virginia silk when reinstalled upon the throne of Great Britain; and that, in gratitude for her loyalty in the hour of his abasement, he permitted the proud old State to rank thenceforward in the British Empire with England, Scotland, and Ireland, and to bear upon her shield the motto, En dat Virginia quartam.

The early influences of the old grange at Stratford, in which he was born, had much to do with shaping the character of General Lee.

"Critics," says Mr. Cooke, "charged him with family pride. If he possessed that virtue or failing, the fact was not strange. Stratford opened before his childish eyes a memorial of the old splendor of the Lees. He saw around him old portraits, old plate, and old furniture. Old parchments contained histories of the deeds of his race; old genealogical trees traced their line far back into the past; old servants grown gray in the house waited upon the child; and, in a corner of one of the great apartments, an old soldier, grey too, and shattered in health, once the friend of Washington and Greene, was writing the history of the battles in which he had drawn his sword for his native land."

To the last hour of his life, General Lee retained the affection for trees, streams, mountains, and country associations with which his happy childhood at Stratford had imbued him. One of the last letters which he ever wrote contains the following passage: "My visits to Florida and the White Sulphur have not benefited me much; but it did me good to go to the White House" -a small country seat not far from Richmond, which came into his possession by his marriage with Mary Custis, the daughter of Washington's adopted son-" and to see the mules walking round, and the corn growing." He loved the country, the woods, the birds, and the brooks as fondly as Izaak Walton or Waterton. His favor.