ing as
though an omnipotent power would here intervene, and here on this
sacred spot overthrow the enemies of this land without the further
sacrifice of blood.'

Quite a different and more recent local association is thus recorded:

'The second time that I stood here was nigh three years ago, when I
spoke to you in relation to John Brown, then in a Virginia jail.
How great the result of that idea which he pressed upon the
country! Do you know with what poetic justice Providence treats
that very town where he lay in jail when I spoke to you before? The
very man who went down from Philadelphia to bring his body back to
his sad relatives--insulted every mile of the road, his life
threatened, the bullets whistling around his head--that very man,
for eight or ten months, is brigadier-general in command of the
town of Charlestown and Harper's Ferry. By order of his superior
officers, he had the satisfaction of finding it his duty, with his
own right hand, to put the torch to that very hotel into which he
had been followed with insult and contumely, as the friend of John
Brown; and when his brigade was under orders to destroy all the
buildings of that neighborhood, with reverential care he bade the
soldiers stop to spare that engine house that once sheltered the
old hero. I do not know any history more perfectly poetic than of
that single local instance given us in three short years. Hector
Tindale, the friend of John Brown, who went there almost with his
life in his right hand, commands, and his will is law, his sword is
the guarantee of peace, and by his order the town is destroyed,
with the single exception of that hall which John Brown's presence
has rendered immortal.'

The graphic details furnished by the army correspondents to the daily
press of the North, reveal to us in vivid and authentic terms the change
which war has wrought in Virginia. The condition of one 'fine old
mansion' is that of hundreds. On the banks of the Rappahannock and in
the vicinity of Fredericksburg is, for instance, an estate, now called
the Lacy House, the royal grant whereof is dated 1690. The bricks and
the mason work of the main edifice are English; the situation is
beautiful; the furniture, conservatories, musical instruments, every
trait and resource suggest luxury. After the battle of Fredericksburg,
the Lacy