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HE traveler in the South who leaves Richmond on
the Chesapeake and Ohio railway, going east-
ward, passes over the most sacred soil of the Old
Dominion, where English civilization was first
planted and took root in America, almost three
centuries ago. If he alights at ancient Williams-
burg, he is on ground every foot of which is con-
secrated by memories of the brave days of old.
As the railway train passes out of sight, he slips
THE CHURCH GATE, WILLIAMSBURG. away from the bustle and forward-looking irrever-

ence of the nineteenth century ; slips away like
some old phantom from the glare of electric lights and the ring of the telephone,
behind the misty veil that shrouds the past, into the nation-building days of the
eighteenth century, when Williamsburg was the notable political school of
the world. For this old town is unique in all the land in its serene antiquity.

The echoes of the busy world come to it faint and far away. It lives in its past.

Its record is written in the hearts of the descendants of its proud old families ;

is inscribed in their genealogies; is pictured in the family portraits on their

walls. Ghosts of the past walk in the halls they once inhabited in the flesh.

Why should they not? Time has only touched the ancient borough with the

pathos of decay and the tragedy of war. The time will come when a new

generation will think less of the past. Williamsburg will fade gradually away,
or modern innovations will rob it of its old-time charm, but at present it
stands without a peer among America’s historic towns.

Of a truth, everything is quaint and venerable and touched with history or
tradition. The streets are mostly grass-grown, and in their names is the very
flavor of colonialism — Scotland, Ireland, England, Nassau, King, Queen, Prince
George, Francis Nicholson, and Duke of Gloucester being among them. Wide
level greens form a setting for the old colonial houses, and horses and cattle
roam and graze at will on green and highway.

Williamsburg is the shire town of James City County, and in Virginia the
county is the political unit:-instead of the town, so that the municipal life centers
at the court house, which is notable as being one of the architectural produc-
tions of Sir Christopher Wren. ‘The projecting hood of the porch, unsupported
by pillars, is a puzzle to visitors. It seems probable that for some reason the
building was never finished. Apart from this it is a model of its kind. In its
two centuries of life, some of Virginia’s most distinguished lawyers have prac-