e man; with
him to live was to hope and to dare. Yet while rarely feeling
despondency and never despair, he did not deceive himself with false or
impossible expectations. He was quick to perceive the real and the
practical, and while enterprising in the extreme he was not in the least
visionary. His nerve, his powers of discrimination, the readiness with
which he could surrender schemes found to be impracticable, if by chance
he became involved in them, and his energy and close attention to his
affairs, made him very successful in business, and undoubtedly the same
qualities, intensified by the demand that war made upon them,
contributed greatly to his military success.

But it can not be denied that not only the reputation which he won, but
the talent which he displayed, astonished none more than his old
friends. He would, I think, have been regarded as a remarkable man under
any circumstances, by all who would have intimately known him, but he
was born to be great in the career in which he was so successful. It is
true that war fully developed many qualities which had been observed in
him previously, and (surest sign of real capacity) he to the last
continued to _grow_ with every call that was made upon him. But he
manifested an aptitude for the peculiar service in which he acquired so
much distinction, an instinctive appreciation of the requisites for
success, and a genius for command, which made themselves immediately
recognized, but which no one had expected. Nature had certainly endowed
him with some gifts which she very rarely bestows, and which give the
soldier who has them vast advantages; a quickness of perception and of
thought, amounting almost to intuition, an almost unerring sagacity in
foreseeing the operations of an adversary and in calculating the effect
of his own movements upon him, wonderful control over men, as
individuals and in masses, and moral courage and energy almost
preternatural.

He did not seem to reason like other men, at least no one could discover
the logical process, if there was one, by which his conclusions were
reached. His mind worked most accurately when it worked most rapidly,
and sight or sound were scarcely so swift as were its operations in an
emergency.

This peculiar faculty and habit of thought enabled him to plan with a
rapidity almost inconceivable. Apparently his combinations were
instantaneously commenced and perfected, and, if provided with the
necessary informatio