sympathy and pity for the heart that had never before asked more than admiration and respect.  He felt that the hour had its demands, and that they must be met.  Action, even in the face of disaster, was less a defeat than an inglorious retirement.  The public, surely unaware of the fearful odds against him, clamored for an engagement; the State expected it of its hero; the government awaited it, and with a brave heart, but no hope, Gen. Lyon prepared for the attack.  The result all the world knows.  Was it a victory where the conquerors were obliged to retire from the field, and carry out their wounded under a flag of truce?  Was it a defeat where the enemy had been thrice repulsed, once driven from the ground, had burned their baggage train, and made no pursuit of the retreating army?

But most mournful are those last moments of the faithful soldier’s life; most solemn those last tones of his voice as his orders rang out on that misty morning amid the smoke and shouts of the battle-field.  He stands here bare-headed, the blood streaming from two wounds which he does not heed, the cloud of perplexity settling over his face like a pall, his troubled eyes fixed upon the enemy.  He turns to head a regiment which has lost its colonel—­“Forward! men; I will lead you!” A moment, and he lies there:  no more striving for victory here; no more anxious hours of weary watching for the succor that never came; no more goadings from an exacting public, nor any more appeals to an unheeding chief.  Even the triumphant hush of life could not smooth out those lines cut by unwonted care upon his face, or answer the mute questioning of that painful indecision there.  So from the West they brought him, by solemn marches, to the East, and colors hung at half-mast, and bells were tolled as the flag-draped hero was borne slowly by.  And to the music of tender dirges, he, whose whole life had been, inspired by the whistling of fifes and rolling of drums, was laid to rest.  A handful of clods falling upon his breast, their hollow sound never thrilling the mother heart that lay again so near her son’s, a volley fired over the grave, and all was over.  Of all the brave men gone, no fate has seemed to us so sad.  Winthrop, young and ardent, with the tide of great thoughts rashing in upon his princely heart, died in the flush of hope with the fresh enthusiasm of poetry and undimmed patriotism shining in his eyes, and we laid our soldier to sleep under the violets.  Ellsworth fell forward with the captured flag of treason in his hand, and the whole nation cheering him on in his early sally upon the ‘sacred’ Virginia soil.  Brave and honorable, with fine powers cultured by study and earnest thought, death took from him no portion of the fame life would have awarded him.  Baker rode into the jaws of death in that fatal autumn blunder; but the ignominy of defeat rested upon other shoulders.  His only to obey, even while ‘all the world wondered.’  But he did not fall before the