North America-2 [12]
but the town was held by the Northern party. Through the lines, into Virginia, they could not go at all. Up to Washington they could not go without a military pass, not to be obtained without some cause given. All trade was at an end. In no town at that time was trade very flourishing; but here it was killed altogether--except that absolutely necessary trade of bread. Who would buy boots or coats, or want new saddles, or waste money on books, in such days as these, in such a town as Alexandria? And then out of 1500 men, one-half had gone to fight the Southern battles! Among the women of Alexandria secession would have found but few opponents. It was here that a hot-brained young man, named Ellsworth, was killed in the early days of the rebellion. He was a colonel in the Northern volunteer army, and on entering Alexandria found a secession flag flying at the chief hotel. Instead of sending up a corporal's guard to remove it, he rushed up and pulled it down with his own hand. As he descended, the landlord shot him dead, and one of his soldier's shot the landlord dead. It was a pity that so brave a lad, who had risen so high, should fall so vainly; but they have made a hero of him in America; have inscribed his name on marble monuments, and counted him up among their great men. In all this their mistake is very great. It is bad for a country to have no names worthy of monumental brass; but it is worse for a country to have monumental brasses covered with names which have never been made worthy of such honor. Ellsworth had shown himself to be brave and foolish. Let his folly be pardoned on the score of his courage, and there, I think, should have been an end of it. I found afterward that Mount Vernon was accessible, and I rode thither with some officers of the staff of General Heintzelman, whose outside pickets were stationed beyond the old place. I certainly should not have been well pleased had I been forced to leave the country without seeing the house in which Washington had lived and died. Till lately this place was owned and inhabited by one of the family, a Washington, descended from a brother of the general's; but it has now become the property of the country, under the auspices of Mr. Everett, by whose exertions was raised the money with which it was purchased. It is a long house, of two stories, built, I think, chiefly of wood, with a veranda, or rather long portico, attached to the front, which looks upon the river. There are two wings, or sets of outhouses, containing the kitchen and servants' rooms, which were joined by open wooden verandas to the main building; but one of these verandas has gone, under the influence of years. By these a semicircular sweep is formed before the front door, which opens away from the river, and toward the old prim gardens, in which, we were told, General Washington used to take much delight. There is nothing very special about the house. Indeed, as a house, it would now be found comfortless and inconvenient. But the ground falls well down to the river, and the timber, if not fine, is plentiful and picturesque. The chief interest of the place, however, is in the tomb of Washington and his wife. It must be understood that it was a common practice throughout the States to make a family burying-ground in any secluded spot on the family property. I have not unfrequently come across these in my rambles, and in Virginia I have encountered small, unpretending gravestones under a shady elm, dated as lately as eight or ten years back. At Mount Vernon there is now a cemetery of the Washington family; and there, in an open vault--a vault open, but guarded by iron grating--is the great man's tomb, and by his side the tomb of Martha his wife. As I stood there alone, with no one by to irritate me by assertions of the man's absolute supremacy, I acknowledged that I had come to the final resting-place of a great and good man,--of a man whose patriotism was, I believe, an honest feeling, untinged by any personal ambition of a selfish nature. That he was pre-eminently a successful