(now General) Francis H. Smith, superintendent of the institute, acquiescing in the proposition to bring his name before the Board of Visitors, and said: "Though strong ties bind me to the army, yet I cannot consent to decline so flattering an offer." Other names had been submitted to the Board by the Faculty of West Point, all distinguished for high scholarship and gallant services -among them Generals McClellan, Reno, and Rosecrans, of the Northern army, and General G. W. Smith of the Confederate army. McClellan, Reno, Rosecrans, Jackson! Such was the occasion upon which these afterwards celebrated athletes came in collision. The Virginian unhorsed all his opponents, and, March 28, 1851, was elected.

We have stated that the condition of Jackson's health was probably the controlling motive for his relinquishment of active service in the field. It is proper to add, however, that he stated to his intimates that one of his objects was to keep his mind fresh, especially in artillery tactics, in order to "embrace any opportunity that might offer, for obtaining command in the event of war." Whether he then contemplated the great collision between the North and the South, is not stated. The authority for the above statement adds: "He seemed to feel that he was born for command;" but at a later period, these martial longings are said to have greatly diminished. He had become a professor of religion, and "would have engaged in no military service but one really defensive; and while desirous of honorable regard, his great aim was duty-good to be done-an approving conscience, and the glory of God."

On the 1st of September, 1851, Major Jackson entered upon his duties as Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy and Instructor of Artillery in the Virginia Military Institute near Lexington. Whatever doubts he may have had about his new duties, there could be no doubt that the locality was a change for the better. Lexington is a town situated in the county of Rockbridge, in the Valley of Virginia, surrounded by blue mountains, and in the midst of smiling fields. Nowhere can be found a purer air, or a more charming landscape. It

was a good exchange for the miasmatic atmosphere of the low grounds of Florida, fruitful in fevers, and stealing away the life of the unacclimated stranger. Such was Jackson's new home, and life must have had a gay and smiling appearance to him there from the beginning. We know that the region soon became dearer to him than all others.

Here were spent the most tranquil and serenely happy hours of a manhood which commenced and ended amid the storms of battle; and here were first revealed to him the full glory and sublimity of that faith in God, which soon became the master element of his being. At Lexington he was happy as husband, father, friend, and citizen; and to this spot of earth the rigid form of the dead soldier, was sent back, and, borne on a caisson of the cadet battery, committed to the earth. He had asked them to bury him there, to let his bones repose in the dear earth to which his thoughts recurred with so much tenderness. On his death-bed, when his hours were numbered, and his spirit drifted slowly toward eternity, the pale lips opened, and he murmured in a whisper:

"Bury me in Lexington, in the Valley of Virginia!"

Two important events mark this period of Jackson's lifehis marriage and profession of religion. He married Miss Junkin, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Junkin, President of Washington College. This lady did not long survive her marriage, and her only child, a daughter, died in infancy. Several years after the death of his first wife he was again married to Miss Morrison of North Carolina. By this marriage he had one child, Julia, born a few months before his death.

Jackson became a member of the Presbyterian church of the town, then under the charge of an excellent old man, the Rev. Dr. White. The circumstances leading to this public profession of Christian faith are unknown to the present writer; but it is certain that he speedily became an active and prominent member of the church, and filled, during his residence at Lexington, important secular positions in it. Every Sunday, with military regularity, the figure of the Professor was seen in his

pew at the Presbyterian church, hymn-book in hand, his earnest countenance turned up to the pulpit with close attention. Religious duties soon became the controlling occupation of his life; the society of good men and women his chief relaxation and greatest source of pleasure. All who know any thing of Jackson, and observed him in private then and during his period of command in the field thereafter, will remember the marked preference which he displayed for the society of clergymen, and the childlike fondness, almost tenderness, which he exhibited toward the pious ladies whom he encountered on his marches. His reputation as an earnest and devoted Christian had singularly endeared him to these gray-haired matrons, and he repaid their attentions with a respect and deference which was beautiful to behold. The present writer has seen him, after a long and exhausting march, when he had scarcely tasted food for twenty-four hours, forget the tempting supper before him, and give his whole attention to the aged lady who sat beside him. This spectacle was familiar to those who lived with him. Strangers may have found in it a topic for amusement and jests; but to the writer of these pages it seemed indicative of that simplicity and goodness which were the natural instincts of his character.

Any discussion of the peculiar religious views of Jackson must be left to abler hands than those of the present writer. He was popularly spoken of as a "fatalist"—which means, if it means any thing, one who believes that what will be, will be. It is sufficient to say of Jackson that he was a member of the Presbyterian Church, and strongly embraced the doctrines of predestination and Providential supervision. It has been said that he cherished an unfailing "confidence in his destiny," and believed that he had "a distinct mission of duty in which he should be spared for the ends of Providence." This may be true; but it is certain that his motto was, "Do your duty, and leave the rest to God." His faith was not speculative, but practical and living. His earnestness of temperament was carried into religious affairs, and he was averse to all sentiment which did not prove

its genuineness by action. With him his Christian faith was a practical influence, shaping his habits and life. The reality of his feeling was shown every day, and no adverse influences seemed to affect it. In camp and surrounded by the many distracting cares of command his habits of meditation and prayer remained unaltered, and he was as devout an observer of religious exercises as in the days of peace. He was generally regarded as sectarian in his views, and one of his nicknames was "The Blue Light Elder." But this popular belief seems to have been entirely erroneous. He was a devoted but not bigoted member of the Presbyterian Church; and a most intelligent staff officer, long serving near his person, assured the present writer that he had no such exclusive feeling whatever. A letter to Dr. Hoge on the subject of army chaplains, in the spring of 1863, is a strong proof of this; and those who were thrown in personal contact with him during his military career, will not easily be convinced that his just, liberal, and Catholic intellect could have hampered itself within the narrow boundaries of sectarianism.

We pass now to his personal traits and habits. Well-meaning persons have drawn a wholly incorrect likeness of Jackson at this period of his life. Misled by admiration, and yielding to the temptation to eulogy, they have bestowed upon Professor Jackson every moral and physical grace, and even his eccentricities have been toned down into winning ways, original and characteristic, which only made their possessor more graceful and charming than before. We are sorry to say that this is all fancy. Jackson was the farthest possible removed from any thing graceful; and as the first merit of any biography is accuracy, we shall endeavor to lay before the reader a truthful sketch of the real form seen moving to and fro, on the streets of Lexington, between the years 1851 and 1861.

It was the figure of a tall, gaunt, awkward individual, wearing a gray uniform, and apparently moving by separate and distinct acts of volition. This stiff and unbending figure passed over the ground with a sort of stride, as though measuring the

distance from one given point to another; and those who followed its curious movements, saw it pause at times, apparently from having reached the point desired. The eyes of the individual at such moments were fixed intently upon the ground; his lips moved in soliloquy; the absent and preoccupied gaze and gen eral expression of the features, plainly showed a profound unconsciousness of "place and time." It was perfectly obvious that the mind of the military-looking personage in the gray coat. was busy upon some problem entirely disconnected from his actual surroundings. The fact of his presence at Lexington, in the commonwealth of Virginia, had evidently disappeared from his consciousness; the figures moving around him were mere phantasmagoria: he had travelled in search of some principle of philosophy, or some truth in theology, quite out of the real, workaday world, and deep into the land of dreams. If you spoke to him at such times, he awoke as it were from sleep, and looked into your face with an air of simplicity and inquiry, which sufficiently proved the sudden transition which he had made from the world of thought to that of reality.

In lecturing to his class, his manner was grave, earnest, full of military brevity, and destitute of all the graces of the speaker. Business-like, systematic, somewhat stern, with an air of rigid rule, as though the matter at issue was of the utmost importance, and he was entrusted with the responsibility of seeing that due attention was paid to it—he did not make a very favorable impression upon the volatile youths who sat at the feet of this Inilitary Gamaliel. They listened decorously to the grave Professor, but, once dismissed from his presence, took their revenge by a thousand jests upon his peculiarities of mind and demeanor. His oddities were the subject of incessant jokes: his eccentric ways were dwelt upon with all the eloquence and sarcastic gusto which characterize the gay conversation of young men discussing an unpopular teacher. No idiosyncrasy of the Professor was lost sight of. His stiff, angular figure; the awkward movement of his body; his absent and "grum" demeanor; his exaggerated and apparently absurd devotion to military regularity; his weari