Soon after Sharpsburg, General Lee one day visited the old manor-house crowning the grassy hill and overshadowed by great oaks; Generals Jackson, Longstreet, and Stuart, accompanied him, and the reception which he met with, though we cannot describe it, was such as would have satisfied the most exacting.

The children came to him and held out their small hands, the ladies divided their attention between him and the beloved "hero of the Valley," Jackson; and the lady of the manor could only express her sense of the great honor of receiving such company, by declaring, with a smile, that the dinner resembled the famous _breakfast at Tillietudlem_ in Scott's "Old Mortality." General Lee highly enjoyed this, and seemed disposed to laugh when the curious fact was pointed out to him that he had seated himself at table in a chair with an open-winged _United States eagle_ delineated upon its back.

The result of this visit, it appeared afterward, was a sentiment of great regard and affection for the general personally by all at the old country-house.

Old and young were charmed by his grave sweetness and mild courtesy, and doubtless he inspired the same sentiment in other places.
His headquarters were at this time in a field some miles from Winchester.

An Englishman, who visited him there, described the general and his surroundings with accuracy, and, from the account printed in _Blackwood's Magazine_, we quote the following sentences: "In visiting the headquarters of the Confederate generals, but particularly those of General Lee, any one accustomed to see European armies in the field cannot fail to be struck with the great absence of all the 'pomp and circumstance of war' in and around their encampments.