32 Southern Historical Society Papers.
around it will cluster a thousand recollections of camp, and march and field, associations of the past, tender and holy,
" Dear as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned On lips that are for others."
It speaks of noble deeds most nobly done; of friends we loved and lost, brave men and true who lived to bless, and died without regret to shield it from dishonor ! Ashby and Stuart, Pelham and Pegram, Bartow and Bee, and he, in character and military genius, if second to any, only to Lee, our own great infantry captain, our Stonewall Jackson, with many, ah, so many thousand kindred spirits, all fell be- neath its folds, and for their sakes we lt)ve that old flag and will love it until we too cross over the river to sleep with them in the silent "bivouac of the Dead."
Doubtless it is best it should be so ; for in the full development of the great social convulsions, and in the final settlement of the great wars, civil and international, which from time to time startle, convulse and confound the world, that which groping in the dark we term the decree of Chance or Fate, is after all, when rightly considered, but the natural and necessary result of the conditions forged by man in the smithy of Earth, as consciously or unconsciously he works out the purposes of Heaven tending ever to the progress and the ultimate benefit of our race.
" O yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will. Defects of doubt and taints of blood ;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed.
Or cast as rubbish to the void. When God hath made the pile complete;
That not a worm is cloven in vain ;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire, Or but subserves another's gain.
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last— far off— at last to all. And every Winter change to Spring."
And so, after the long and dismal winter of Defeat and Hate Com- eth, more slowly than we could wish, but cometh at last, the bright
