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General Sedgwick retired to the north bank of the Rappahannock, and laying down his bridges again, opposite to Fredericksburg, on Sunday morning crossed into the town, and, with our corps, captured Marye's Hill by a surprise. His other corps were despatched through Stafford to the support of Hooker, while he retained about eighteen thousand men. General Early now confronted Marye's Hill on another line, while Sedgwick, leaving a detachment to hold him in check, marched westward to open his way to Hooker at Chancellorsville. But the fate of that general was already sealed. Lee was now at liberty to send a part of his force to meet Sedgwick, so that on Monday he found himself confronted and arrested in his march by the Confederate troops, while General Early recaptured Marye's Hill, and cut off his retreat towards Fredericksburg. Nothing now remained for him but to retire as expeditiously as possible across the river at Banks's Ford,a point between that town and Hooker's position,— which, by the aid of his artillery upon the northern bank, he effected, though not without heavy loss." The next day Hooker himself made similar arrangements, and during the night of Tuesday withdrew the remainder of his army. Thus was the crown put pon Jackson's success. From the time that he commenced that march, devised while he sat shivering inder the trees in the early morning, and which had een, at the outset, so fatally misinterpreted by Hooker,

CHAPTER XVIII.

FAREWELL !

FAREWELL now to tents and camps and reconnoitered posts; to the great commander erect in his saddle with the light of battle in his eye; to the anticipation of the minutest military contingencies and the devising plans to meet them. Farewell to strategy and war; the thunder of the cannonade is over; the gold laced hat is laid aside; one more battle indeed has to be fought, but with an enemy, the last, already destroyed!

As he had "held his ground" so grandly in the field; so now he "held his ground" on his dying bed. Brave there to fight, he was brave now to endure; as ready to suffer as to act. His was an unfeigned acquiescence in that Divine will to which his own heart had for so long been entirely surrendered.

How strangely men err as regards the activity of faith; imagining that it can be summoned and exercised in a moment, and found ready. Whatever hopeful things may be said or felt as to the efficacy of repentance at the last, no one will deny that a mere acknowledgment of the fact of atonement will

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never bear up the spirit in the swellings of the great river. In this as in everything else long exercise and preparation best lead up to a crisis. The soldier is drilled minutely in times of peace, in order that, well instructed in and well accustomed to his weapons and their use, he may be able to stand in the battle. It was so with Jackson. The faith he used at the last was the faith he had tried and proved through an eventful life in all the vicissitudes of his career. It was the faith that made him pray over the letter he posted, over the water he drank, over the food he ate, over the word he spoke; it was the faith that kept him always on his guard, that brought out so legibly on his forehead the mystic characters, "Holiness to the Lord," that consecrated his influence, faculties, and opportunities, from first to last, to the service of God. And so when he lay maimed and mangled in his lingering pain, it served his uttermost need. The God he sought in his extremity was no stranger; nor he an alien. It had been an old and tried fellowship. In garrison life, at the academy, in home quiet, in the ardour of campaigning, in the exigencies of battle, he had lived in the holy sunshine it brought. He had only to turn his face to the wall and say, "My God!"

To die calmly, professing faith; to die calmly, because philosophy teaches that dismay is useless; to take a leap, after all into the dark, with the words "I believe" on the lips; this it must be allowed is a

very different thing from his experience whose whole soul is braced up with assurance; who hears the voice of the Redeemer at his side; who fears and knows no evil; whom no power of earth or hell can set on or hurt, because God is for him.

For after all, whatever may be argued from the much misquoted example of the dying thief, the certainty of whose deliverance is remembered while the peculiarities of his case are forgotten; of one thing we may be certain,-that only of Divine truth which we have made our own will serve us at the last. It is a vain thing to build upon a dying confession of faith in the absence of any present spiritual life and warfare. Unless, as Christ's brethren, we are fighting with all the earnestness God's grace can give us, with sin and temptation, with the world within and without; fighting for God, fighting towards God; that great weapon of faith in the sacrifice, with which so many piously trifle, will prove ineffectual when we most require it. For, argue and hope as delusively as we may, the only sure precursor of the death of faith is the life of faith.

It might have been expected that, to one of so ardent a temperament, the constraint of inaction would have been intolerable. But Jackson had learnt, as we have already seen, unreserved thankful submission; learnt it by heart; drilled himself into it; and was now enabled to exhibit it in fullest exercise.

His repose indeed lay in his unquestioning reliance

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on the loving wisdom of his God. The interests of his country, so supremely dear to him, for the advancement of which he had verily "done what he could," he now committed to Him Who judgeth righteously; and, having thus disburdened himself of his great anxiety, lay in apparent unconsciousness of the mighty projects which, but a few hours ago, he had been so earnestly revolving. "When he awoke from his long and quiet slumber," says Dr Dabney, "on the Sabbath morning, the distant sounds of a furious cannonade told his experienced ear that a great battle was again raging. But the thought did not quicken his pulse, nor draw from him a single expression of restlessness. He awaited for news of the result with full faith in God, and in the valour of the army; only betraying such anxiety as an affectionate woman might feel, for the safety of his comrades in arms."

His first act, when news had been brought to him of what was transpiring around, was to request Lieutenant Morrison to go to Richmond and bring Mrs Jackson to his bedside. He then received a visit from his chaplain, Mr Lacy, who had just heard of his misfortune. "O general!" said the good man as he entered the tent, "what a calamity!" Jackson thanked him for his sympathy, and then added with remarkable emphasis, as though anxious to convey his personal testimony to the goodness and mercy of his Heavenly Father's dealings, "You see me severely wounded, but not depressed or unhappy.