streets till we pull up at Ford’s hotel, where we intend taking up our quarters. A night arrival at a strange hotel is always more or less depressing—on this occasion it is especially so; we pass from the dim obscurity of the streets without to a still greater obscurity within. Preceded by a wisp of a lad we ascend the stairs and pass through a dimly-lighted corridor; not the ghost of a sound follows us, the echo of our footsteps is muffled in the thick carpet, and swallowed up in the brooding silence.
Our attendant unlocks and throws open a door, flourishes a tiny lamp above his head, then, with an extra flourish, sets it on the table, inquiring with a hoarse voice, as though he had just made a meal of sawdust, “do we want anything more”; as we had had nothing we could not very well require any more of it. By the light of our blinking lamp we inspect our apartment, which is at least amply supplied with beds; there are three of them, each of Brobdignagian proportions—rivals to the great bed of Ware—they fill the room to overflowing and seem struggling to get out of the window. We are soon lost in a wilderness of feathers and wandering through the land of Nod. It seems to me that the worst room in the house is always reserved for the punishment of late arrivals, which is bad diplomacy on the part of hotel proprietors, as it frequently drives their guests away in search of better quarters. It might have been so with us; but the next morning our smiling host appears and ushers us into a delightful suite of rooms on the ground floor, opposite the gardens of the Capitol, where the playful squirrels are so numerous and so tame that they will come jumping across the road to your windows to be fed, take nuts from your hand, and sit demurely by your side and crack them.
CHAPTER II.
To-day and the yesterdays.—Richmond.—Its monuments.—Its surroundings.—The sculptor’s studio.—Andromache.
It is at Richmond we get our first view of the South and the Southern people. Although we are only twelve hours from the booming, hustling city of New York, yet we feel we have entered a strange land. The difference is not so much in mere externals, as that the whole character of life is changed, and from all sides it is borne upon us that we are in the land of a “lost cause;” it impregnates the very air we breathe, and is written on the grave earnest faces of the people; it reveals itself everywhere and in everything.
A few hours in Richmond, and somehow we feel as though the war was of yesterday. The victor may forget, but the vanquished, who have tasted the bitterness worse than death, remember; it is ever “yesterday” with the mother who mourns her dead. The passion for Virginia glows in every Virginian breast, and a myriad hearts beating as one mourn with proud regret for her noblest sons. Not Virginia alone; the generous North and faithful South unite in yielding due reverence to the indomitable Jackson and to Lee—the stainless gentleman and pure patriot. Here, in Richmond, those names are household words, and every day we hear fresh anecdotes of their lives and deaths. But the South does not waste its time in lamenting over their graves; there is no greater mistake than to imagine that it is frittering away its energies in vain regrets. The past is past, the dead are buried; and on the ruins of the old life the South is building up a new—in fact, it is recreating itself. New railways opening, great factories arising on every side, bear witness to the energy with which the South is throwing itself into the work of restoration. The reviving South of to-day bears promise of fairer fruitage, a far nobler future than could ever have been reaped from their beloved and buried past. Now that the curse of slavery, the inherited evil—not their crime, but their misfortune—has been torn out of the fair land, at the root of whose seeming prosperity it lay coiled like a canker worm—now that the blot is effaced, washed away in the life blood of the best and bravest of the North and South—their undaunted spirits are united in one grand effort to lift up their beautiful land till it shall stand in the foremost rank among many nations.
No one visiting the South to-day can recognise a single feature of its ancient self, so complete is the change that has swept over the whole land, so silent the revolution that has worked in the minds of men and the arrangement of things. It is like a creature that has been dead, buried, and resurrected to a higher and nobler state of existence; in fact, looking back upon its life among the yesterdays it can scarcely recognise itself; the very atmosphere seems changed from a sultry enervating air to an invigorating breeze, affecting the spirits as well as the bodies of the people.
Never was ruin so proudly met, defeat so grandly borne; there is no useless looking back, no lingering regrets over the irrevocable past—their eyes and their energies are bent on the onward march. But we must hasten to take our first view of the city of Richmond.
It is situated something like its namesake, our own English Richmond, only instead of being laved by our broad familiar Thames, it is girdled by the grand historic river “James,” which winds in graceful coils in and out and round and round like a silver serpent gliding through a paradise of green. The city stands on a series of low-lying softly undulating hills; the Capitol, a building of pure classical architecture, stands in the centre of the city silhouetted against the bright blue sky, and is a landmark for miles round. Standing on this Capitol Hill, the highest point, we have a magnificent view spread panoramically before and around us, while on every side the landscape blends all the softness and brilliant colouring of the lowlands with the strength and majesty of the highland scenery, variegated by picturesque near views of land and water, here a white sail flutters in the soft breeze, and groups of grand old forest trees lift their leafy crowns high into the cloudland, and are sometimes lost among the fleecy cloudlets grey and white that are sailing by, leaving the azure blue far above them; from this point of vantage, we look down, to where the city fades away in ragged fringes of poor squalid-looking dwellings, apparently inhabited by our brethren of African descent. The principal residential streets are certainly fine and wide, with handsome detached houses in varied styles of architecture, which redeem from any monotony the quiet, dignified, and emphatically “gentlemanly neighbourhood.” Looking to the left we see the shabby one-horse cars crawling along the crazy up-and-down streets, running hither and thither, stretching away till they are hidden in a wilderness of green or lost in the pale blue mist of the distant horizon, and the public buildings, cathedral, and many-spired churches are prominent features therein. The river stretching away to the right widens and hides among the foothills, then reappears again and again till it dwindles into a narrow thread, seeming to sew the land and skies together. Looking round on this imposing scene, so rich in memories of bygone days, our thoughts naturally connect the present with the past, and wander through the long line of dead years to a time more than two centuries ago, when the great ships ploughed the breast of this river, and brought the first freight of civilisation to what was then a wilderness.
Away to the left, about two miles along the banks of the river, we descry the spot where Powhatan wielded his sceptre and ruled his dusky tribe as kings rule not in these days; we can almost fancy we see Pocahontas launch her frail skiff upon the bosom of the placid water.
All trace of the tribe and of their dwelling is swept away; only the grand old trees marked by the finger of passing ages still stand, with gnarled and knotted trunks, quivering leaves, and withering branches, as though they were struggling in their death agony, and must soon lie low, with the rest of earth’s perishable things. Only a stretch of fancy, and we see Captain Smith surrounded by swarms of threatening faces, passing under their green vigorous branches, as he believes, to a barbarous death.
Before descending the hill, we make a tour of inspection around the splendid groups of statuary which adorn the gardens. First in public favour and in general interest stands the Washington monument; a gigantic and finely executed equestrian figure of George Washington, mounted on an imposing granite column, rising from a star-shaped base; beneath and around him, standing on separate pillars, are the full sized figures of Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and sundry other heroes and statesmen of past days; but of later and fresher interest, is the bronze statue said to be a life-like portrait of Stonewall Jackson. This fine production is believed to be the last and best work of the celebrated English sculptor Foley; it bears the following inscription:—
“Presented by English gentlemen as a tribute of admiration for the soldier