that morning by Major-General Pendleton. At the appointed time I strolled over to Dunn's Hill, where General Lee's tent was pitched, and found General Pendleton ensconced under a magnificent tree, and a small party of soldiers, with a few ladies from the dwelling near by, collected about him. In a few moments, General Lee appeared with his camp chair, and sat down. The services began. That terrible battery, Number Five, was firing, very slowly, each report of the great guns making the otherwise profound silence still more profound. I sat down on the grass and gazed, with such reverence as I had never given to mortal man before, upon the grand face of General Lee. He had been greatly fatigued by loss of sleep.

"As the sermon progressed, and the immortal words of Christian doctrine came to our hearts and comforted us, sweet influences born of the liberal sunlight which lay warm upon the grass, of the moving leaves and trembling flowers, seemed to steal over the General's soul. Presently his eyelids gradually closed, and he fell gently asleep. Not a muscle of him stirred, not a nerve of his grand countenance twitched; there was no drooping of the head, nor bowing of the figure.

As he slumbered so, sitting erect, with arms folded upon his chest, in an attitude of majestic repose, such as I never saw assumed by mortal

man before; as the large and comfortable word fell from the preacher's lips; as the lazy cannon of the enemy anon hurled a screaming shell to within a few hundred yards of where we sat, as finally a bird flew into a tree overhead and sat and piped small blissful notes in unearthly contrast with the roar of the war engines; it seemed to me as if the present earth floated off through the sunlight, and the antique earth returned out of the past, and some majestic god sat on a hill, sculptured in stone, presiding over a terrible yet sublime contest of human passion."

A pleasant interlude in Lanier's soldier life was a two weeks' visit to Macon in the spring of 1863. The city had not yet felt any of the calamities of war, although high prices prevailed. Mrs. Clay, wife of Senator Clement C. Clay, was a visitor in the city at that time, waiting for a summons to join her husband in Richmond. She writes, in recalling those days: "Spring was in its precious beauty. Gardens glowed with brilliant blossoms. Thousands of fragrant odors mingled in the air, the voices of myriad birds about the foliaged avenues." "1 It was then that Lanier met Miss Mary Day, at the home of their friend, Miss Lamar. Her father was a prominent business man in Macon. She had lived for the first few years of her life in Macon, but

sang

1 A Belle of the Fifties, p. 194.

had been since 1851 studying music in New York, and living with cultivated people at Saratoga and West Point. In an atmosphere of romance, music, and love Lanier spent his vacation.

On their return to the Virginia battlefields the two brothers were accompanied by Mrs. Clay and her sister-in-law. Mrs. Clay had been a popular belle in Washington in the fifties, and was well acquainted with leading men and women throughout the country. She had heard and met in social circles Charlotte Cushman, Jenny Lind, Thackeray, Lord Napier, and other notabilities. Lanier, eager always to hear of the larger world outside of his own limited life, was much attracted by her reminiscences of well-known men and women. Returning to Suffolk, Va., Clifford Lanier wrote to her: "What a transition is this from the spring and peace of Macon to this muddy and war-distracted country! Going to sleep in the moonlight and soft air of Italy, I seem to have waked embedded in Lapland snow." Sidney wrote: "Have you ever wandered, in an all night's dream, through exquisite flowery mosses, through labyrinthine grottoes, 'full of all sparkling and sparry loveliness,' over mountains of unknown height, by abysses of unfathomable depth, all beneath skies of an infinite brightness caused by no sun; strangest of all, wandered about in wonder, as if you had lived an eternity

in the familiar contemplation of such things? If you have dreamed, thought, and felt so, you can realize the imbecile stare with which I gaze on all of this life which goes on around me here. Macon was my two weeks' dream." 1

During 1863 and a large part of 1864 the two brothers served as scouts in Milligan's Corps along the James River. The duties were unusually dangerous and onerous, from the fact that their movements had to be concealed, and that they were in constant danger of being captured. In this work of hard riding Lanier displayed a cool and collected courage; he was untiring in his energy, prudent and cautious. Notwithstanding the dangers and hardships, he looked upon the period of life at Fort Boykin on Burwell's Bay -their headquarters as "the most delicious period of his life in many respects." Writing of it later he said: "Our life was as full of romance as heart could desire. We had a flute and a guitar, good horses, a beautiful country, splendid residences inhabited by friends who loved us, and plenty of hairbreadth 'scapes from the roving bands of Federals who were continually visiting that Debatable Land.. Cliff and I never cease to talk of the beautiful women, the serenades, the moonlight dashes on the beach of fair Burwell's Bay, and the

1 A Belle of the Fifties, p. 200.