ith the "Butternuts." No one, whom I saw,
exhibited any emotion at the strewn spectacles on every side, and the
stories I had read of the stony-heartedness during the plague, were more
than rivalled by these charnel realities. Already corruption was
violating the "temples of the living God." The heat of the day and the
general demoralizing influences of the climate, were making havoc with
the shapely men of yesterday, and nature seemed hastening to reabsorb,
and renew by her marvellous processes, what was now blistering and
burdening her surface. Enough, however, of this. Satiated with the
scenes of war, my ambition now was to extend my observations to the
kingdoms of the Old World.

CHAPTER XXVI.

OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT IN ENGLAND.

The boy's vague dream of foreign adventure had passed away; my purpose
was of a tamer and more practical cast; it was resolved to this problem:
"How could I travel abroad and pay my expenses?"

Evidently no money could be made by home correspondence. The new order
of journals had no charity for fine moral descriptions of church
steeples, ruined castles, and picture galleries; I knew too little of
foreign politics to give the Republic its semi-weekly "sensation;" and
exchange was too high at the depreciated value of currency to yield me
even a tolerable reward. But might I not reverse the policy of the
peripatetics, and, instead of turning my European experiences into
American gold, make my knowledge of America a bill of credit for
England?

What capital had I for this essay? I was twenty-one years of age; the
last three years of my minority had been passed among the newspapers; I
knew indifferently well the distribution of parties, the theory of the
Government, the personalities of public men, the causes of the great
civil strife. And I had mounted to my saddle in the beginning of the
war, and followed the armies of McClellan and Pope over their sanguinary
battle-fields. The possibility thrilled me like a novel discovery, that
the Old World might be willing to hear of the New, as I could depict it,
fresh from the theatre of action. At great expense foreign
correspondents had been sent to our shores, whose ignorance and
confidence had led them into egregious blunders; for their travelling
outlay merely, I would have guaranteed thrice the information, and my
sanguine conceit half persuaded me that I could present it as
acceptably. I did not wait to ponder upon this suggestion. Th