was stretched across the stream, and passengers and luggage were ferried over the rapid swollen torrent to proceed on their journey by the return train from Wheeling. This stoppage caused a delay of some hours, and so I had time to wander about the ruins of what once was the town of Harper's Ferry. Here, a year before, stood the armoury of the United States, where 1,500 workmen were employed constantly. Now everything was destroyed. The walls alone were left standing, and the town was half in ruins. There is nothing grand about the débris of small red-brick buildings. Just after the fall of Fort Sumter, when the Confederates were expected daily to enter Washington, a friend of mine was passing the treasury buildings, with General Stone, who was afterwards confined at Fort Lafayette on a charge of treason. My friend said something to the General about the beauty of the marble portico, and the answer he rereived in reply was, "Yes; the treasury will make a fine Palmyra." So it would have done, but there is nothing Palmyresque about the ruins of Harper's Ferry. There is nothing but a look of squalid misery -of wanton destruction. The ground around the arsenal is strewed with fragments of the workmen's cottages that stood around it, and amidst the broken masses of brickwork the sign-post of some roadside inn, left by mere chance still standing, rose gibbetlike, with its sign-board riddled through with rifle-shot

creaking harshly on its rusty hinges. The town itself, which bore traces of once having been busy and prosperous, was almost deserted; soldiers swarmed in every hole and corner, and sentries were placed at every turning, but otherwise the place seemed empty. There were few men visible, and even the women and children stood sullenly apart. Most of the shops were closed, and a few that remained open had little in them. There is no resurrection, I fear, possible for Harper's Ferry. Standing at the confluence of two rivers, the Shenandoah and the Potomac, between precipitous cliffs resembling the Avon at Clifton, only on a grander scale, it is one of the loveliest spots in America; but ever since the war, a fatality seems to have hung over it. Since I saw it, it has changed hands four times over from Confederates to Federals, and the battle of Antietam was fought almost within sight of it. Ever since John Brown's insurrection it has never prospered. I was shown the little outhouse where the stern old Puritan was confined, after the failure of his mad attempt. It was here that, lying wounded, mangled, and at death's-door, he was tortured by the questionings of Mr. Mason. And now two years have scarcely passed, and Mr. Mason is in England, owing his liberty, if not his life, to the strength of a free country; begging in vain for help to an insurrection as fatal as that of his quondam prisoner his slaves escaped in a body— his house occupied by Massachusetts regiments, and his

property ruined-while the Northern regiments, as they marched across the Potomac into Virginia, shrouded by the dusk of the evening, used to sing in triumph that-" John Brown's soul was marching on" before them.

After all, Harper's Ferry was the property of the Federal Government; and, therefore, the Confederates had perhaps a right to destroy it. But, if I had been the staunchest of Secessionists, and also for my misfortunes a shareholder in the Baltimore and Ohio line, I should have found it hard to excuse the wanton injury inflicted on private property in Cumberland. This was the chief railway depôt on the line, and before the Confederates evacuated it they destroyed every piece of rolling stock along the road. miles on either side I passed burnt-up cars, shattered engines, and coal trucks, which, being of iron, could neither be burnt nor broken, and had therefore been rolled down the embankments. Fancy Wolverton burnt down, with everything breakable in its sheds smashed and battered, and you will know the look of Cumberland junction.

For

As long as we remained in the manufacturing districts near Baltimore, the aspect of the houses and people was comfortable and prosperous enough; and, indeed, this region has been but little directly affected by the war. But, as soon as we left Maryland for Western Virginia, the scene changed. Here, for the

first time in the States, I saw the symptoms of squalid, Old World poverty. Miserable wooden shanty hovels, broken windows stuffed with rags, and dirty children playing together with the pigs on the dung-heaps before the doors, gave an Irish air of decay to the few scattered villages through which the railroad passed. Our train, owing to the necessity of proceeding with extreme caution during the night, through fear of the obstructions which Secessionist sympathizers might have laid across the line, moved on at a foot's pace, and our journey occupied some thirty-six hours, instead of the twenty-four which it was advertised to take. The snow, too, still lay on the high bleak uplands, and what with the cold, the weariness of sitting for hours on lowbacked seats, and the constant stoppages at the shuntings in order to allow trains moving eastward loaded with soldiers and supplies to pass by us, our progress towards the end was a dismal and a dreary one.

There is one fact for which I shall always remember Wheeling gratefully-namely, that it was the first place where I was really hot since I left Italy, some eight months before. Otherwise, it is a quiet sleepy little town, without much to be said about it. Like all the Southern towns, too, I had yet seen, it was wonderfully English in appearance. The broad herring-bone flagged High Street; the small narrow-windowed red-brick houses, with their black chimney-pots; the shabbylooking shops, with the flies buzzing about the dirty

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window-panes; the long walls and tall factory-chimneys, all made the place resemble an English country-town, where the old county people had died out, and the new manufacturing element had not prospered. Still, Wheeling is a go-ahead place, in its way, for a Southern city, and has proved loyal to the Union. It will be the capital of the new State of Western Virginia, if it ever succeeds in establishing its independence; and it is the head-quarters of the emancipation party in the State, probably because its German population is considerable. General Fremont had his head-quarters here, when in command of the mountain district, and the town was, therefore, filled with foreign officers. crowd of new arrivals had just come in, as I was making my way to bed; and there, sitting on the one hat-box which formed the whole of his luggage, composed, clean-shaven, and serene, was my old acquaintance, Major, Colonel, General, or whatever his rank now may be, Von Traubenfass. My friend is a mystery to me, as to every one else. What man about the press does not remember Traubenfass years ago, in the great military scandal case of - Well, it is a long time ago, and there is no good raking-up old sores. Where and in what strange medley has Traubenfass not been involved? He has served, of course, in the Spanish legion-in the wars of the Rio Grande-in the Schleswig-Holstein campaign. He has been in the service of half a dozen Indian princes, and has a perfect galaxy of