Happily, the Cemetery has been kept free from tawdry memorials and inconsequential ornament, and enveloped in an atmosphere of dignity well fitting its sacred character. Its most impressive tomb is that dedicated to the Unknown Dead, which contains the remains of more than two thousand soldiers found on various battlefields but never identified. “Their names and deaths,” says the inscription, “are recorded in the archives of their country, and its grateful citizens honor them as their noble army of martyrs.” Not far away is a fine amphitheater with a carpet of turf and a canopy of trellised vines, where memorial exercises are held annually on Decoration Day, the President almost always taking part. There is also a Temple of Fame, bearing the names of Washington and Lincoln, with those of the military leaders who particularly distinguished themselves in the Civil War. An extension has recently been made in the grounds devoted to sepulture, where the most conspicuous monument is that which commemorates the tragedy of the battleship _Maine_ in Havana harbor. The base is built to represent a gun-turret on the deck of a man-of-war; on this are inscribed the names of the victims, while from the center of the turret rises a mast with a fighting-top. A larger and more ambitious amphitheater, also, has been laid out in the extension. From Arlington we can go, by the same road that Washington trod on his trips, to Alexandria, a town which fairly reeks with associations, from the colonial names of some of its streets--King, Queen, Prince, Princess, Duke, Duchess, Royal--to its remnants of cobblestone pavement laid by the Hessian prisoners in the Revolution. Here is the old Carlyle mansion, where General Braddock had his headquarters before starting on his ill-fated expedition against the French and Indians. In its blue drawing-room Washington, as a young surveyor ambitious to serve his king, received the first rudiments of his military education; and at the foot of yonder staircase one evening stood the same Washington, expectant, while pretty Sally Fairfax tripped lightly down to join him and be led through the opening cotillion at her coming-out ball. This must have been a splendid mansion in its time, with a terraced garden descending to the river-bank, and a fountain in the midst of the flower-beds. It was built on the ruins of a fort used by the early settlers against the Indians; the living-rooms of the fort became the cellar of the mansion, and the fort proper the plaza, upon which the main hallway opens. You enter the house now through a cozy little tea-room established by a group of young ladies of Alexandria; and it may be your good fortune to be shown about the premises by one of them who is herself a member of the historic Carlyle and Fairfax families and familiar with all their ancestral tales.