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Mr. Trail assumed a sad expression befitting the tragic compliment with which he prepared to greet the young Virginian; but the latter answered him very curtly, declining his offers of hospitality, and only stayed in Mr. Trail’s house long enough to drink a glass of wine and to take up a sum of money of which he stood in need. But he and Captain Franks parted on the very warmest terms, and all the little crew of the “Young Rachel” cheered from the ship’s side as their passenger left it.

Again and again Harry Warrington and his brother had pored over the English map, and determined upon the course which they should take upon arriving at Home. All Americans of English ancestry who love their mother country have rehearsed their English travels, and visited in fancy the spots with which their hopes, their parents’ fond stories, their friends’ descriptions, have rendered them familiar. There are few things to me more affecting in the history of the quarrel which divided the two great nations than the recurrence of that word Home, as used by the younger towards the elder country. Harry Warrington had his chart laid out. Before London, and its glorious temples of St. Paul’s and St. Peter’s; its grim Tower, where the brave and loyal had shed their blood, from Wallace down to Balmerino and Kilmarnock, pitied by gentle hearts; before the awful window at Whitehall, whence the martyr Charles had issued, to kneel once more, and then ascended to Heaven; before playhouses, parks, and palaces, wondrous resorts of wit, pleasure and splendour; before Shakespeare’s resting-place under the tall spire which rises by Avon, amidst the sweet Warwickshire pastures; before Derby, and Falkirk, and Culloden, where the cause of honour and loyalty had fallen, it might be to rise no more: before all these points in their pilgrimage there was one which the young Virginian brothers held even more sacred, and that was the home of their family, that old Castlewood in Hampshire, about which their parents had talked so fondly. From Bristol to Bath, from Bath to Salisbury, to Winchester, to Hexton, to Home; they knew the way, and had mapped the journey many and many a time.

We must fancy our American traveller to be a handsome young fellow, whose suit of sables only makes him look the more interesting. The plump landlady looked kindly after the young gentleman as he passed through the inn-hall from his post-chaise, and the obsequious chamberlain bowed him upstairs to the “Rose” or the “Dolphin.” The trim chambermaid dropped her best curtsey for his fee, and Gumbo, in the inn-kitchen, where the townsfolk drank their mug of ale by the great fire, bragged of his young master’s splendid house in Virginia, and of the immense wealth to which he was heir. The post-chaise whirled the traveller through the most delightful home scenery his eyes had ever lighted on. If English landscape is pleasant to the American of the present day, who must needs contrast the rich woods and growing pastures and picturesque ancient villages of the old country with the rough aspect of his own, how much pleasanter must Harry Warrington’s course have been, whose journeys had lain through swamps and forest solitudes from one Virginian ordinary to another log-house at the end of the day’s route, and who now lighted suddenly upon the busy, happy, splendid scene of English summer? And the high-road, a hundred years ago, was not that grass-grown desert of the present time. It was alive with constant travel and traffic: the country towns and inns swarmed with life and gaiety. The ponderous waggon, with its bells and plodding team; the light post-coach that achieved the journey from the “White Hart,” Salisbury, to the “Swan with Two Necks,” London, in two days; the strings of pack-horses that had not yet left the road; my lord’s gilt post-chaise and six, with the outriders galloping on ahead; the country squire’s great coach and heavy Flanders mares; the farmers trotting to market, or the parson jolting to the cathedral town on Dumpling, his wife behind on the pillion–all these crowding sights and brisk people greeted the young traveller on his summer journey. Hodge, the farmer’s boy, took off his hat, and Polly, the milk-maid, bobbed a curtsey, as the chaise whirled over the pleasant village-green, and the white-headed children lifted their chubby faces and cheered. The church-spires glistened with gold, the cottage-gables glared in sunshine, the great elms murmured in summer, or cast purple shadows over the grass. Young Warrington never had had such a glorious day, or witnessed a scene so delightful. To be nineteen years of age, with high health, high spirits, and a full purse, to be making your first journey, and rolling through the country in a post-chaise at nine miles an hour–Oh, happy youth! almost it makes one young to think of him!

And there let us leave him at Castlewood Inn, on ground hallowed by the footsteps of his ancestors. There he stands, with new scenes, new friends, new experiences ahead, rich in hope, in expectation, and in the enthusiasm of youth–youth that comes but once, and is so fleet of foot!

And still more glad would he have been had he known that the near future was to verify his mother’s belief; to restore to him the twin-brother now mourned as dead. And glad are we, in looking beyond this story of boyhood days, to find that though in the Revolutionary War the subjects of this sketch fought on different sides in the quarrel, they came out peacefully at its conclusion, as brothers should, their love never having materially diminished, however angrily the contest divided them.

The colonel in scarlet and the general in blue and buff hang side by side in the wainscoted parlour of the Warringtons in England, and the portraits are known by the name of “The Virginians.”