and it was not contemplated that it would cross the hostile lines, and reach the confederate capital.

But assuming the proof of forgery complete, the question arises cui bono? In a letter from one who is convinced of the forgery, it is asked: "But is the game worth the candle?' If the Duty Letter contained any imputation on General Lee's character, or any sentiment unworthy of him, his vindication would justify any amount of trouble; but such is not the case, and your contention, however fine and conclusive, is rather academic than really important."

*

The answer to this is, in the language of Mrs. Lee, in 1864 (or of whoever wrote the Repudiation Letter): "It is a harmless deception, yet the cause of truth needs this refutation." In this view we know that General Lee concurred. Again, Mrs. Lee said, in 1872, to Dr. Jones: "It is a very good letter * but General Lee did not write it." General Lee himself said: "I do not remember the letter, and I do not think I wrote it." Is it honoring to General Lee to go on ascribing to him the authorship of a letter which he disclaimed?

Again, is it honoring to General Lee to permit constantly recurring controversy over a letter purporting to be written by him? Ever since his death, at regular intervals, the Duty Letter has appeared in the papers, with high commendation, to be followed inevitably by communications questioning its genuineness. Issue was joined, but, as the facts were not known, there could be no decision. To quote the words used in the former paper: "To the writer it has seemed due to General Lee's memory to settle, if possible, before death destroyed the testimony of witnesses, the doubt that overhung the Duty Letter, and to prevent the recurrence of disputes as to its authenticity."

But what has been lost if the Duty Letter must be consigned to the limbo of detected forgeries? In the opinion of the writer, nothing of real value, if we axcept possibly the Duty Sentence. The glamour, which General Lee's great name has thrown over the Duty Letter has led some to imagine that the Duty Letter casts a glamour over General Lee. But such is not the case. General Lee's fame would derive no lustre from the Duty Letter if it were genuine. Even the Duty Sentence ("Duty, then, is the

sublimest word in our language") does not compare in virile force with Kant's noble apostrophe: "Duty! thou sublime and mighty word." And General Lee himself has given us a sentence more inspiring than the Duty Sentence, a sentence which unites Duty and Honor as one and inseparable:

"There is a true glory and a true honor; the glory of duty done, the honor of integrity of principle."

As was said in conclusion of the former paper, these words of General Lee come as his benison to all who nobly strive for the right as they see it, in peace or in war, in victory or in defeat. They are worthy to be inscribed on his monument, and to be the world's epitaph on the Southern Confederacy, and on its heroic defenders.

CHARLES ELISHA TAYLOR.

By G. W. PASCHAL,

Professor of Latin and Greek, Wake Forest College.

Charles Elisha Taylor, B. Litt. the University of Virginia, 1870, was born at Richmond, Virginia, on October 28, 1842. He died at his home in Wake Forest, North Carolina, on November 5, 1915, at the age of seventy-three, after an illness of less than two days. The cause of his death was paralysis of the heart. He had been a teacher in Wake Forest College from October, 1870, until his death, and had been its president for 21 years of that time, from 1884 to 1905. He was a most important factor in the development of that institution to its present rank of one among the foremost Baptist colleges of the country.

Dr. Taylor-in this sketch we shall call him Dr. Taylor, as he was known among his friends, for the degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon him by Richmond College in 1884. the degree of Doctor of Letters by the University of North Carolina in 1889, and the degree of Doctor of Laws by Mercer University in 1898–Dr. Taylor was fortunate in his parentage. His father, Rev. James Barnett Taylor, D. D., was born in Lincolnshire, England, in 1804. When a child his parents brought him

to America.

At twenty years of age he had entered the ministry as a Baptist preacher, and for twenty-seven years before his death in 1871 was Corresponding Secretary of the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. Dr. Taylor's mother, Mary Williams Taylor, came of a distinguished New England family. Her grandfather was Dr. Elisha Wil

liams, President of Yale College from 1725 to 1739. Her father served in the Continental army as an aid to General Washington. In this home were born three sons, Dr. George B. Taylor, missionary of the Southern Baptists to Italy, Rev. James B. Taylor, a prominent Baptist minister of Virginia, and Charles Elisha Taylor, the subject of this sketch.

In his boyhood, the education of young Taylor was carefully looked after. A most important element in it was the culture of his home and parents. His father was a man of wide scholar

ship and literary taste and took a keen interest in the scientific. philosophic, religious, and political development of his day. As secretary of a foreign mission board he gained a cosmopolitan outlook rarely found at that time. These large and extended interests of the father had no small influence in forming the character of the son. As a boy he heard his father and the scholarly visitors at his home discuss the wonderful developments of the middle nineteenth century in the realms of science, religion, and philosophy, and from these discussions he imbibed an interest that followed him through life.

His education was interrupted by the War. In 1858 he had entered the freshman class of Richmond College. In April, 1861, on the day Virginia seceded from the Union, he left the college and volunteered his services to his state. He was with Lee in the West Virginia campaign, and then with Jackson until the battle of Kernstown, in which he received a severe wound. In 1863 he became a member of the Signal and Secret Service Corps under the command of General J. E. B. Stuart. In this branch of the service he attained the rank of adjutant and remained until the end of the War.

Soon after the War Dr. Taylor took up his interrupted education, entering the University of Virginia. As has been said, he was graduated from this institution in 1870. Respecting his studies at the University it is well to note their solid scholastic quality. They extended far into the fields of Mathematics, Philosophy and the Latin and Greek languages and literatures, and were not limited by a definite curriculum. Becoming interested in Plato, a group of students, of which the young Taylor was one, read through in the original Greek the 2500 pages of the Dialogues. After his graduation he complemented his education by several months' travel in Europe.

With this endowment of native talents, culture, and training, on August 12, 1870, at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of Wake Forest College, "Charles E. Taylor, of Virginia," was elected “Assistant Professor of Language, it being left to his option to enter upon his duties at the beginning of the first or second term of the session." He entered upon his duties at the beginning of the first term. In the catalogues from

1870 to 1882 the entry under his name is "Professor of Latin;" from 1883 to 1885, "Professor of Latin and Moral Philosophy;" and from 1885 to 1915, "Professor of Moral Philosophy," it being evident that he began to teach in Moral Philosophy before he resigned the chair of Latin.

It was as a teacher of Latin that Dr. Taylor first gained recognition as a teacher of extraordinary ability. Among his students the first year were many men who in one way or another have become widely known. Of these we may mention A. C. Dixon, J. T. Bland, D. A. Covington, C. H. Martin, J. E. Ray, E. W. Timberlake, W. C. Brewer, H. Trantham, and R. T. Vann. Many of these men would give you an anecdote to illustrate their teacher's insistence upon grammatical accuracy in translation. Owing to one feature of this insistence the students dubbed him with the nickname, "Old Aorist," which fell into disuse as he turne! to other duties than teaching Latin. Along with the emphasis on syntax went the teacher's enlightening and stimulating interpretation of Latin literature. It is not too much to say that as a master of Latin idiom and as a teacher of the language Dr. Taylor had few equals. As long as he lived he retained his interest in Latin, and in person taught it to his children and grandchildren. When opportunity offered he would scan with the keenest interest the Latin exercise of a college student. Often he would write short letters to friends in that language, and always idiom and syntax were in true Ciceronian style.

In the catalogue of 1885 Dr. Taylor is first listed as Professor of Moral Philosophy. This he continued to teach with short intermissions, when engaged in raising funds for the College, as long as he lived, and in this he did his greatest work as teacher. In Philosophy Dr. Taylor was a conservative of the most pronounced type, generally following Sir William Hamilton. To Dr. Taylor there was nothing true in metaphysics, ethics or logic that did not include the personal directing agency of God. To fix this belief ineradicably in the soul of every student was the purpose that gave zeal to his teaching. For his text-books in later years he used in class the Psychology and Ethics of Noah K. Davis, both because of their conservative view and because in these texts psychological and ethical phenomena are systemat