New and bad initials! The father and patriot Washington would have wept tears of blood to have read them here,--to have read them anywhere, bearing such deplorable meaning.
They were U.S.A.and C.S.A., as it were chasing each other up and down the pages of the visitors' register.

Sad, sad was the sight-- sadder, in a certain sense, than the smoke-wreaths of the Tuscarora and Alabama ploughing the broad ocean with their keels.

U.S.A.

and C.S.A.! What initials for Americans to write, with the precious memories of a common history and a common weal still held to their hearts--to write here or anywhere! What a riving and a ruin do those letters record! Still they brought in their severed hands a common homage-gift to the memory of the Writer of Abbotsford.

If they represented the dissolution of a great political fabric, in which they once gloried with equal pride, they meant union here--a oneness indissoluble in admiration for a great genius whose memory can no more be localised to a nation than the interest of his works.
American names, both of the North and South, may be found on almost every page of the register.