[Note: Thersites--strange that Schiller in his Siegeslied should have forgotten it--never lived to return. According to the Scholia Vetera on Lycophron, 999, this monkey-shaped ([Greek: pithekomorphos]) creature was slain by Achilles for gouging out the eyes of Penthesilea's maid, with whom Achilles had fallen in love. A better point was made by Ovid, that master of points (Am. 2, 6, 41): _Tristia Phylacidae Thersites funera vidit._] [Note: The French artist was GUILLAUME, who came to this country shortly before the war. In the picture to which I refer, General LEE was the main figure. GUILLAUME'S picture of the Surrender at Appomattox bore evidence of minute study of every detail of that historic event.] Of course, what was to all true Confederates beyond a question "a holy cause," "the holiest of causes," this fight in defence of "the sacred soil" of our native land, was to the other side "a wicked rebellion" and "damnable treason," and both parties to the quarrel were not sparing of epithets which, at this distance of time, may seem to our children unnecessarily undignified; and no doubt some of these _epitheta ornantia_ continue to flourish in remote regions, just as pictorial representations of Yankees and rebels in all their respective fiendishness are still cherished here and there. At the Centennial Exposition of 1876, by way of conciliating the sections, the place of honour in the "Art Annex," was given to Rothermel's painting of the battle of Gettysburg, in which the face of every dying Union soldier is lighted up with a celestial smile, while guilt and despair are stamped on the wan countenances of the moribund rebels. At least such is my recollection of the painting; and I hope that I may be pardoned for the malicious pleasure I felt when I was informed of the high price that the State of Pennsylvania had paid for that work of art. The dominant feeling was amusement, not indignation. But as I looked at it I recalled another picture of a battle-scene, painted by a friend of mine, a French artist, who had watched our life with an artist's eye. One of the figures in the foreground was a dead Confederate boy, lying in the angle of a worm fence. His uniform was worn and ragged, mud-stained as well as blood-stained; the cap which had fallen from his head was a tatter, and the torn shoes were ready to drop from his stiffening feet; but in a buttonhole of his tunic was stuck the inevitable toothbrush, which continued even to the end of the war to be the distinguishing mark of gentle nurture,--the souvenir that the Confederate so often received from fair sympathizers in border towns. I am not a realist, but I would not exchange that homely toothbrush in the Confederate's buttonhole for the most angelic smile that Rothermel's brush could have conjured up. [Note: The toothbrush was a badge of culture on both sides, as the following passage shows: