With restoration came a revival of old desires, appetites, and attachments. It required one additional campaign to sober me in these respects, and I was not a little relieved, to receive an order on the fourth day, to proceed to Washington, and attach myself to the "Army of Virginia" at the head of which Major-General John Pope had just been placed. After two quieter days' enjoyment, in the Quaker City, I reported myself at the Capital, but was debarred from taking the field at once, owing to the tardiness of the new Commander. For two weeks or more, I loitered around Washington, and although the time passed monotonously, I saw many persons and events which have much to do with the history of the Rebellion. The story of "Washington During the War" has yet to be written in all its vividness of enterprise, devotion, and infamy. It has been, in periods of peace, a dull, dolorous town, of mammoth hotels, paltry dwellings, empty lots, prodigiously wide avenues, a fossil population, and a series of gigantic public buildings, which seemed dropped by accident into a fifth-rate backwoods settlement. During the sessions Washington was overrun with "Smartness": Smart pages, smart messengers, smart cabmen, smart publicans, smart politicians, smart women, smart scoundrels! Greatness became commonplace here, and Mr. Douglas might drink at Willard's Bar, with none so poor to do him reverence, or General Winfield Scott strut like a colossus along "the Avenue," and the sleepy negroes upon their backs would give him the attention of only one eye. It was interesting, to notice how rapidly provincial eminence lost caste here. Slipkins, who was "Honorable" at home, and of whom his county newspaper said that "this distinguished fellow citizen of ours will be heard from, among the greatest of the free,"--Slipkins moved to and fro unnoticed, and voted with his party, and drank much brandy and water, and left no other record at the Capital than some unpaid bills, and perhaps an unacknowledged heir. A gaping rustic and his new bride, or a strolling foreigner, marvelling and making notes at every turn, might be observed in the Patent Office examining General Washington's breeches, but these were at once called "greenies," and people put out their tongues and winked at them. The Secretaries' ladies gave parties now and then, attended by the folks who sold them horses, or carpets, or wines; the President gave a "levee," whereat a wonderfully Democratic horde gathered to pinch his hands and ogle his lady; the Marine band (in _red_ coats), played twice a week in the Capital grounds, and Senators, Cyprians, Ethiops, and children rallied to enjoy; a theatre or two played time-honored dramas with Thespian companies; a couple of scholars lectured in the sombre Smithsonian Institution; an intrigue and a duel filled some most doleful hiatus; and a clerk absconded with half a million, or an Indian agent robbed the red men and fell back to the protection of his "party." A