reat victories might entitle it, are the purest sources of its
glory and its fame. God bless the army that has permitted us to
consummate this journey and to gaze upon this spectacle, while it does
not impress us too proudly, too triumphantly. Both pride and triumph
have, of course, a place in the tumultuous feeling that surges through
the hearts of all; yet as in every true man is born an instinct of
compassion for a fallen foe, we prefer that the shout should go up in
honor of our victory alone, and not because these have suffered.

The boat touches the shore at Rockett's, the foot of Richmond. A few
minutes' walk and we tread the pavements of the capital. There are no
noisy and no beseeching runners; there is no sound of life, but the
stillness of a catacomb, only as our footsteps fall dull on the deserted
sidewalk, and a funeral troop of echoes bump their elfin heads against
the dead walls and closed shutters in reply, and this is Richmond. Says
a melancholy voice: "And this is Richmond."

We are under the shadow of ruins. From the pavements where we walk far
off into the gradual curtain of the night, stretches a vista of
desolation. The hundreds of fabrics, the millions of wealth, that
crumbled less than a week ago beneath one fiery kiss, here topple and
moulder into rest. A white smoke-wreath rising occasionally, enwraps a
shattered wall as in a shroud. A gleam of flame shoots a grotesque
picture of broken arches and ragged chimneys into the brain. Huge piles
of debris begin to encumber the sidewalks, and even the pavements, as we
go on. The streets in some places are quite choked up from walking. We
are among the ruins of half a city. The wreck, the loneliness, seem
interminable. The memory of lights in houses above, beheld while upon
the steamer, alone keeps despondency from a victory over hope; and
although the continued existence of the Spottswood Hotel is vouched for
by authority, my lodge in such a wilderness seems next to impossible.
Away to the right, above the waste of blackened walls, around the
phantom-looking flag upon the capitol,--the only sign betwixt heaven and
earth, or upon the earth, that Richmond is not wholly deserted,--beyond
and out of the ruins, we walk past one of two open doorways where the
moon serves as candle to a group of talking negroes. The gas works,
injured by fire, are not working, and "ile" has not been struck in the
Confederacy. Not a white man appears until we reach the
Spott