McPherson, who fell at Atalanta, and the Naval Monument, near the Capitol, to the sailors who were killed in the Civil War. These were all Federal heroes, and Washington is a Federal capital. I could not but think how near it was, for the time at least, being a Confederate capital after that memorable July day in 1861, when in despair Mr. Lincoln crossed the Potomac to visit the only fortified port which lay between Washington and the victorious but inept Southerners at Manassas, and found the defenders in flagrant disobedience to orders. But that time is as dead and gone as the period of the Wars of the Roses, albeit the evil that men do lives after them, and the Southern fire blazes no longer--it burns all the same. Later in the day the Attorney-General, Mr. MacVeagh, drove the Duke and myself out to the Soldiers' Home, which gave me another opportunity for meditations, with which I shall not weary my readers. The drive revealed new improvements and grand efforts on the part of "the city of magnificent distances" to come to terms with its outlying boundaries. How pure the air, how bright the sky, how fair the scene! The wide expanse of roofs, the still waves of the ordered house-tops, above which rose the rocky steeples, the colossal mass of the Capitol on the Virginian shore, the rolling wooded heights of Arlington, the Potomac shining like a sinuous belt of burnished gold in the setting sun! It seemed so peaceful and so secure. And yet we are climbing to "the Soldiers' Home," the outcome of one of the most sanguinary wars of modern times, of which in one sense this District of Columbia was the cause and end. It consists of a number of detached buildings of stone or marble, on a high plateau broken into wooded dells and undulating gently towards the south and west, where the ground dips so as to give a fine view of the city some three miles away. The Home stands in a large enclosed park (500 acres), and there is plenty of land beside for the soldiers to cultivate for the benefit of the institution. In these grounds there is a pleasant detached house, which is set apart for the use of the President _pro tem._, when the heat renders Washington more than usually abominable in summer time, and Mr. MacVeagh said he thought it very possible the President would move out as soon as he could. Mr. Lincoln was very fond of his _villeggiatura_ here. As it was Sunday there was no work going on, and, moreover, it was not easy, we found, for even an Attorney-General of the Republic and a Minister of State to get in through the closed gates, so the Duke got out of the phaeton which Mr. MacVeagh's fast trotters had whirled up the steep at a creditable rate, and sought to repeat the miracle of Samson at Gaza, but we managed to dispense with it. Probably it was because of the day of rest so many old men were crawling about the avenues smoking pipes, and looking very unhappy, I thought. It struck me that there were many small and weak-looking