Our large engraving is no merely ideal picture--it is the ilustration of a sad story which is told in the words of our artist, whose words are copied below. It is only one of the ten thousand sad and sorrowful stories of private ruin which this accursed war has brought upon the people of the unhappy South.

In our picture, besides the main incident, are shown the advancing Union army--the rebel officer inducing the old man's sons to leave their home--the battle wherein they are killed--the black and desolate night after the battle, etc.

Our correspondent writes as follows:

Of the many heart-sickening scenes I have witnessed in Virginia since the advance of our army beyond Yorktown, none has so powerfully appealed to my sympathy as the one which I have endeavored to faithfully portray in the accompanying sketch. It was at the close of a beautiful day during the present month that our army, tired and worn by the fatigue incident to a long march over dusty roads, and beneath a scorching sun, encamped upon a plain situated a few miles from the Chickahonminy river. Naturally enough the scenery around had a charm for my eye, which grew all the more captivating the longer I gazed upon it. Crossing a little stream of water just ahead, and following its labrynthine course for a few hundred yards, I quite unexpectedly reached the borders of a dense piece of woods, when turning I came in full view of a little log house, built as is the custom in Virginia, with a gable-end chimney, which lifted its blackened head but a few feet above the roof. The house had, we judge, been inclose within a square of neat white railings, but now they were either broken, or entirely torn away, while the gate swung upon a single hinge. Upon a stool, standing beneath the shade of a noble oak tree, sat an infirm old man, with whitened hair and a long flowing beard, who supported himself upon the stool by a thick knotted cane which he held in his right hand.

To the left of the little path which led to the house, also sat a woman, whose withered locks proclaimed that the summer of her life was passing away, and that old age and the grave were rapidly succeeding. The pair were evidently man and wife, and both of them were intently engaged in looking out at the camping troops. Four negro "hands," one of them a woman, stood to one side of the couple, leaning over the palings within which the house was inclosed. From a pole by the gate was suspendd a large white flag, improvised from a bed sheet, which signifed that the occupants of the house desired the protection of our troops. A mounted sentinel stood upon the lawn in front of the house, he having been sent thither as a guard by one of our generals, until after the regular guard shouldbe posted. To the left of the house were grouped together three or four crazy looking log houses the timber of which were hewn after all fashions, and loosely thrown together. These tenements were occupied by the "slave hands" of the plantation; and upon the ground in front of the "smoke house" sat a stout negro wench, holding in her lap a negro child six or eight months old. Two other children were engaged in dragging part of a broken coach over the ground, and completed the scene.

Riding up to the house we gave the old man and his wife the customary salutation, and in return received a very kind response. "How do you get along?" we asked of them, not directing our question particularly to either of the party.

"Not well, sir; not well, sir. Right smart of trouble, sir," was the response--"right smart of trouble, sir." Here the old gentlemen tremblingly leaned forward upon his staff, as if to rise, a movement, which we immediately frustrated. As we spoke he turned his face full upon us, and the peculiarity of its features strangely impressed us. His cheeks were pallid and sunken, and his looks worn and haggard. The corners of his mouth were deeply marked by tobacco stains, while the saliva which had gathered upon his lip was slowly trickling down his snow white beard; his cane was moving backward and forward, while his head was continually shaking in a slow and measured manner. Supposing that the old man's mind was affected by some loss that he had sustained during the war, we inquired whether the rebel soldiers had done him injury during their sojourn in this section.

"Oh, yes sir, yes sir," simultaneously answered both man and wife. The old man continued, "They took all our corn, killed our cattle, toted off two of our servants, and even stole all the bacon and cornmeal we had to live on. No, sir; they didn't leave us so much as would feed one person a fortnight; we were deceived, sir, and now we can't do anything but starve."

All the while the old man's staff had been dangling idly in the air, and his head had been slowly moving in the manner spoken of. His wife, perceiving the grief that our inquiries had caused her husband, stepped up to his side and laying her thin and bony hand upon the old man's shoulder, said to him in soft tones: "Never mind, Abel, don't take on so. I know those good gentlemen will give us something to eat and will not let us starve."

"Will you, sir?" asked she, looking piteously up into our faces.

"Our generals will help you, no doubt," we answered, "so soon as you make your case known to them."

"There," ejaculated the woman, drawing nearer to the side of the old man, "I knew, we could get assistance from these gentlemen, they won't let us starve; don't worry yourself so. It will be all right yet."

The woman's hair was thickly silvered with gray; her step was trembling and feeble, and on her countenance she bore traces of sorrow and want, such as the every day vicissitudes of life had not placed there. Though endeavoring to buoy up the fast sinking hopes of her husband, yet at intervals her words and conduct indicated that her own hopes were dying out.

The guard at the gate, who, all this time, had not been an inattentive listener to the conversation that was passing between us, now rode up closer to the tree, and asked the old man, "whether he didn't have some children to protect him against the incursions of the rebel soldiers?"

There was a pause for a second, as though the subject was an unpleasant one, but soon the old man answered. "No, sir; I had children, sir, two sons, when the war broke out; but they both went away--both went away, sir."

"Are they in the rebel army?" we inquired.

This time it was the wife who spoke. The answer came quickly, and there was a seeming scream in the tones in which it was spoken. "They are in the Southern army, sir;" then recollecting herself, she said, "Oh, sir, they are my sons, and I can't bear to hear them called rebels. I know the people of Virginia have been wild and foolish, and that they have brought all this trouble on themselves; but, sir, they are not all to blame. My boys went away eight months since, because some of their comrades did, I don't know for what else, and I have not heard from them but twice; may be they aren't alive. It seems all the same."

"All the same--all the same," repeated the old man, catching up the last words his wife had spoken. "I don't think they wanted to go, sir; you see there was a cavalry company raised in the neighborhood here, and my boys being good riders, some of the officers persuaded them to go along. I did not know what was best for them just then; didn't kind of understand this war business. You see I am very old, sir, and so by and by I told them they might do as they pleased; and the officers getting at them again, away they went. I wished they'd never gone, sir, never gone!"

The story had been told, and so promising the old folks that their immediate necessities should be attended to (and a promise that was fulfilled), we left the miserable couple, and rode back towards the encampment. Once in the woods again we turned and cast a glance at the half crazed old man, seated at the side of his wife, and the negroes lounging idly on the railings. The down trodden wheat fields, and the desolation everywhere visible, told too plainly that THE PENALTY OF TREASON has come at last. Famine and death were staring those old Virginians in the face, but at the eleventh hour we came to forgive and restore. That white flag at the gate was respected, and all animosity forgotten. On a late battlefield the two sons were both killed; sacrificed to the exigencies of the blackest cause for which Man ever yet gave up his life.