royalty or in the plain dignity of our republican institutions. To see
him once was to remember him forever. His image is as distinct before me
this moment as if he stood in the flesh with his eye beaming forth the
goodness of his nature and his hand outstretched, as was his wont, to
receive mine.

Mr. Speaker, his illustrious father, when the shadows of Appomattox
closed round him, when the darkness of defeat enveloped him, when his
soul was rent and torn and his mind was filled with anguish and his
ragged and tired and worn veterans, reduced to a mere thin skirmish
line, the remnant of an army that had shed unfading luster upon the
American arms and the American soldier, gathered with tear-moistened
cheeks about him to bid him farewell and receive his blessing, gave
utterance to a sentiment just quoted by my colleague [Mr. TUCKER], a
sentiment as grand and noble as was ever written upon any Roman tablet
or carved upon any column of enduring marble that was ever reared in the
flood light of glory:

Duty is the sublimest word in our language.

Yes, Mr. Speaker, thus spoke Robert Edward Lee, the soldier, hero,
Christian, and philanthropist: and when we come to study the life and
character of WILLIAM HENRY FITZHUGH LEE we are impressed with the fact
that he took duty as his talismanic word, that it was the star that
guided him, and that he followed it as faithfully as the "wise men"
followed the Star from "the East" to Jerusalem and thence to Bethlehem.

We believe that in his youth, on the heights of Arlington, where his
eyes first opened upon the light, he learned at his father's knee and by
his father's daily walk and conversation the great lesson of duty which