whether with us they are not almost too precious.  Regarding railways in America generally, as to the relative safety of which, when compared with our own, we have not in England a high opinion, I must say that I never saw any accident or in any way became conversant with one.  It is said that large numbers of men and women are slaughtered from time to time on different lines; but if it be so, the newspapers make very light of such cases.  I myself have seen no such slaughter, nor have I even found myself in the vicinity of a broken bone.  Beyond the Susquehanna we passed over a creek of Chesapeake Bay on a long bridge.  The whole scenery here is very pretty, and the view up the Susquehanna is fine.  This is the bay which divides the State of Maryland into two parts, and which is blessed beyond all other bays by the possession of canvas-back ducks.  Nature has done a great deal for the State of Maryland, but in nothing more than in sending thither these webfooted birds of Paradise.

Nature has done a great deal for Maryland; and Fortune also has done much for it in these latter days in directing the war from its territory.  But for the peculiar position of Washington as the capital, all that is now being done in Virginia would have been done in Maryland, and I must say that the Marylanders did their best to bring about such a result.  Had the presence of the war been regarded by the men of Baltimore as an unalloyed benefit, they could not have made a greater struggle to bring it close to them.  Nevertheless fate has so far spared them.

As the position of Maryland and the course of events as they took place in Baltimore on the commencement of secession had considerable influence both in the North and in the South, I will endeavor to explain how that State was affected, and how the question was affected by that State.  Maryland, as I have said before, is a slave State lying immediately south of Mason and Dixon’s line.  Small portions both of Virginia and of Delaware do run north of Maryland, but practically Maryland is the frontier State of the slave States.  It was therefore of much importance to know which way Maryland would go in the event of secession among the slave States becoming general; and of much also to ascertain whether it could secede if desirous of doing so.  I am inclined to think that as a State it was desirous of following Virginia, though there are many in Maryland who deny this very stoutly.  But it was at once evident that if loyalty to the North could not be had in Maryland of its own free will, adherence to the North must be enforced upon Maryland.  Otherwise the City of Washington could not be maintained as the existing capital of the nation.