[We do not thoroughly comprehend the author's drift in the foregoing
paragraph, but are inclined to think its tone reprehensible, and its
tendency impolitic in the present stage of our national difficulties.]
In Alexandria we visited the tavern in which Colonel Ellsworth was
killed, and saw the spot where he fell, and saw the stairs below, whence
Jackson fired the fatal shot, and where he himself was slain a moment
afterwards; so that the assassin and his victim must have met on the
threshold of the spirit-world, and perhaps came to a better understanding
before they had taken many steps on the other side. Ellsworth was too
generous to bear an immortal grudge for a deed like that, done in hot
blood, and by no skulking enemy. The memorial-hunters have completely
cut away the original wood-work around the spot, with their
pocket-knives; and the staircase, balustrade, and floor, as well as the
adjacent doors and door-frames, have recently been renewed; the walls,
moreover, are covered with new paper-hangings, the former having been
torn off in tatters; and thus it becomes something like a metaphysical
question whether the place of the murder actually exists.
Driving out of Alexandria, we stopped on the edge of the city to inspect
an old slave-pen, which is one of the lions of the place, but a very poor
one; and a little farther on, we came to a brick church, where Washington
used sometimes to attend service,--a pre-Revolutionary edifice, with ivy
growing over its walls, though not very luxuriantly.
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