sagacious diplomats, Senators Mason and Slidell, had delayed their
journey to Europe in order to aid the President in the treaty of peace
that the victorious legions of Johnston were to exact in Washington?

Jack was amazed and disheartened at what he saw and heard. The activity,
resources, gayety, and confidence of the authorities and people,
recalled to his mind, Oxford, the jocund capital of Charles II and the
royalists, while the Commonwealth leaders were drilling their armies.
But instead of the chaos of rapine, the wanton excesses, the pillage of
churches and colleges that marked the tenure of the miserable Charles,
Richmond was as orderly, serene, the Congress as deliberate, and the
people as content, as the Rome of the conquest of Persia or France after
Jemmapes. The army was hot for battle, and as confident of the result as
the Guard at Austerlitz or McClellan at Malvern. The work done and the
way of its doing showed that the populace, as well as the rulers, were
convinced of the destiny of the city to be henceforth mistress of
herself, the preordained metropolis of half the continent--perhaps the
whole continent--for, would the North be able to resist joining States
with a destiny so glorious--a regal republic where birth and rank were
tacitly enthroned? The city's greatness was taken by the mass, as a
matter of course--like an heir in chancery who has won all but the final
decree in the suit, or like a great nobleman who has come to his
inheritance.

Though it was the first week of November when the Atterburys found home
affairs going on smoothly in the town-house, summer still disputed with
winter the short lovely days of fall, as Jack described the lingering
May-day mildness of this seductive Southern autumn. It was the first
season he had ever spent south of New York, and, like most Americans, he
realized, with wonder, that the wind which brought ice and snow to New
York, visited lower Virginia with only a sharp evening and morning
reminder that summer was gone. The balm and beauty of the climate came
with something of healing to the hurt his heart and hope had suffered at
Rosedale. If anything could have mitigated the pangs of a young warrior
perplexed in love and held in leash in war, it was such an existence as
the Atterburys inveigled him into leading. The part of carpet-knight is
not difficult to learn, and the awkwardness of it is to some extent
atoned for when the service is constrained. At least Ja