sepulchre. Nature seemed to have abandoned the struggle early, and the young men passed, with rapid pace, from youth—that youth so rich in its future—to manhood, from manhood to old age. Neither prudence nor philosophy could protect them from the grievous influences of the morbid conditions to which they were exposed. The delicate and noble faculties were blunted and destroyed. Some perished at once, almost as quickly as though struck by the lightning of heaven, whilst others lingered, according to the strength of the hidden resources, the reserved and superabundant powers of youth.

Among the few survivors of the present day we can learn of the fearful struggle between life and death, by the gray hairs, the impassive features, from which the smile of youth has fled forever, the feeble and tottering steps of the man who has prematurely arrived at his limit of earthly existence.

The integrity and character exhibited by these men, in the midst of these tortures, is unsurpassed.

It was the same morale that immortalized the armies of Italy and Moreau, that covered with splendor the heroes of Sparta and Rome, and proved incontestably the superiority of the volunteer over the mercenary regular. The wretched men died in silence, or with the name of home or the loved ones on their lips, and adjuring their comrades to stand firm in defence of their faith, their country, their God. “My treatment here is killing me, mother; but I die cheerfully for my country.” They died as the wounded French died at Jemappes, with the delirium and exaltation of patriotism, uttering at the last moment some of the strains of the songs of freedom, and the names of country and liberty. “Thus the enthusiasm of the combat prolonged or reproduced itself, and survived even in their agony.”

The sufferings of these men, wasting, putrefying, dying daily by scores, by hundreds, without touching the remorseless hearts of the prison-keepers, recall to mind those monsters which history points out as rising now and then from out the wreck of social order. It was one of the results of Slavery, for Slavery weakens the natural horror of blood.

Cruelty is naturally progressive, for it engenders the fear of a just revenge. New cruelties succeed, until extermination becomes the rule and ends the scene.

“To hate whom we have injured is a propensity of the human mind,” says Tacitus.

VII.

At the distance of about five hundred paces northwestward from the stockade, in a little field which is almost overshadowed by the surrounding pines, appear a multitude of stakes standing upright in the earth, in long and regular lines.

Upon every one of these fragments of boards figures have been carelessly scratched by an iron instrument; and they run up to the appalling number of almost thirteen thousand! Each stick represents a dead man,—a hero,—and this multitude of branchless and leafless trunks reminds us rather of a blasted vineyard than of a cemetery arranged for the human dead.