The
fortifications, so numerous in all this region, and now so unsightly with
their bare, precipitous sides, will remain as historic monuments,
grass-grown and picturesque memorials of an epoch of terror and
suffering: they will serve to make our country dearer and more
interesting to us, and afford fit soil for poetry to root itself in: for
this is a plant which thrives best in spots where blood has been spilt
long ago, and grows in abundant clusters in old ditches, such as the moat
around Fort Ellsworth will be a century hence. It may seem to be paying
dear for what many will reckon but a worthless weed; but the more
historical associations we can link with our localities, the richer will
be the daily life that feeds upon the past, and the more valuable the
things that have been long established: so that our children will be less
prodigal than their fathers in sacrificing good institutions to
passionate impulses and impracticable theories. This herb of grace, let
us hope, will be found in the old footprints of the war.
Even in an aesthetic point of view, however, the war has done a great
deal of enduring mischief, by causing the devastation of great tracts of
woodland scenery, in which this part of Virginia would appear to be very
rich.
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