thither with some officers of the staff of General Heintzelman,
whose outside pickets were stationed beyond the old place. I
certainly should not have been well pleased had I been forced to
leave the country without seeing the house in which Washington had
lived and died. Till lately this place was owned and inhabited by
one of the family, a Washington, descended from a brother of the
general's; but it has now become the property of the country, under
the auspices of Mr. Everett, by whose exertions was raised the money
with which it was purchased. It is a long house, of two stories,
built, I think, chiefly of wood, with a veranda, or rather long
portico, attached to the front, which looks upon the river. There
are two wings, or sets of outhouses, containing the kitchen and
servants' rooms, which were joined by open wooden verandas to the
main building; but one of these verandas has gone, under the
influence of years. By these a semicircular sweep is formed before
the front door, which opens away from the river, and toward the old
prim gardens, in which, we were told, General Washington used to
take much delight. There is nothing very special about the house.
Indeed, as a house, it would now be found comfortless and
inconvenient. But the ground falls well down to the river, and the
timber, if not fine, is plentiful and picturesque. The chief
interest of the place, however, is in the tomb of Washington and his
wife. It must be understood that it was a common practice
throughout the States to make a family burying-ground in any
secluded spot on the family property. I have not unfrequently come
across these in my rambles, and in Virginia I have encountered
small, unpretending gravestones under a shady elm, dated as lately
as eight or ten years back. At Mount Vernon there is now a cemetery
of the Washington family; and there, in an open vault--a vault
open, but guarded by iron grating--is the great man's tomb, and by