other people, until after a great
many months of such pastime, it grew so abominably irksome that
I determined to look a little more closely at matters with my
own eyes."

It was in the early days of March that Hawthorne, in company with his
friend and publisher, Wm. D. Ticknor, left Boston on a visit to
Washington and the seat of war, then in its immediate vicinity.

The sketches of natural scenery are touched with the same pencil that
gave us the charming picture of daily life at the Old Manse.

It was in New York that the travellers had the first clear intimation of
the unnatural order of things consequent on a state of civil war. Here
they found a rather prominent display of military goods at the shop
windows--such as swords, with gilded scabbards and trappings,
epaulettes, carbines, revolvers, and sometimes a great iron cannon at
the edge of the pavement, as if Mars had dropped one of his
pocket-pistols there while hurrying to the field.

As railway companions, they had now and then a volunteer in his
French-gray great coat, returning from furlough, or a new-made officer
travelling to join his regiment in his new-made uniform, which was
perhaps all of the military character that he had about him; but proud
of his eagle buttons, and likely enough to, do them honor before the
gilt should be wholly dimmed.

The country, in short, so far as bustle and movement went, was more
quiet than in ordinary times, because so large a proportion of its
restless elements had been drawn towards the seat of conflict.

But the air was full of a vague disturbance.

The author's patriotic alarm seems to have been especially excited by
the host of embryo warriors that filled the cars and thronged the
stations all along the journey. One cause of this terror will seem to us
now all the more amusing because there are not wanting those who will
doubtless honestly believe that in giving it expression he wrote with
something of prophetic unction:--

"One terrible idea occurs in reference to this matter. Even
supposing the war should end to-morrow, and the army melt into
the mass of the population within the year, what an
incalculable preponderance will there be of military titles and
pretentions for at least half a century to come! Every country
neighborhood will have its general or two, its three or four
colonels, half a dozen majors, and captains without
end--besides noncommiss