deceived. Before he actually entered upon his great office, and for a
considerable time afterwards, there is no reason to suppose that he
adequately estimated the gigantic task about to be imposed on him, or,
at least, had any distinct idea how it was to be managed; and I presume
there may have been more than one veteran politician who proposed to
himself to take the power out of President Lincoln's hands into his
own, leaving our honest friend only the public responsibility for the
good or ill success of the career. The extremely imperfect development
of his statesmanly qualities, at that period, may have justified such
designs. But the President is teachable by events, and has now spent a
year in a very arduous course of education; he has a flexible mind,
capable of much expansion, and convertible towards far loftier studies
and activities than those of his early life; and if he came to
Washington a backwoods humorist, he has already transformed himself
into as good a statesman (to speak moderately) as his prime-minister.

Among other excursions to camps and places of interest in the
neighborhood of Washington, we went, one day, to Alexandria. It is a
little port on the Potomac, with one or two shabby wharves and docks,
resembling those of a fishing-village in New England, and the
respectable old brick town rising gently behind. In peaceful times it
no doubt bore an aspect of decorous quietude and dulness; but it was
now thronged with the Northern soldiery, whose stir and bustle
contrasted strikingly with the many closed warehouses, the absence of
citizens from their customary haunts, and the lack of any symptom of
healthy activity, while army-wagons trundled heavily over the
pavements, and sentinels paced the sidewalks, and mounted dragoons
dashed to and fro on military errands. I tried to imagine how very
disagreeable the presence of a Southern army would be in a sober town
of Massachusetts; and the thought considerably lessened my wonder at