AN OLD COLONIAL CAPITAL.
)

Virginians alone to make laws for Virginia; the blunder of the Stamp Act by
the home government followed, and Virginia and Massachusetts clasped hands
in the struggle for freedom. Few yet saw it as a struggle for independence,
and the royal governors still came to Williamsburg and maintained their little
courts. The social round went on above the slumbering volcano of the Anglo-
Saxon passion for liberty and justice.

Never did Williamsburg see a more brilliant period. The festivities at tho
Palace and at the Raleigh Tavern were rivaled in interest by the flashes of
intellect at the Capitol, and in the college certain high-minded youths were
being prepared to serve their country in the trying years so close at hand.
Jefferson writes of dances in the Apollo Room at the Raleigh, and of his

 

WASHINGTON’S HEADQUARTERS, WILLIAMSBURG.

(At the time of the surrender of Yorktown.)

“ Belinda,” who was one of the famous Virginia Burwells; showing that great
minds found time and thought for the diversions of the passing hour, and that
woman’s smiles could charm even the embryo statesmen who gathered inspira-
tion from Wythe and men like him. Dinwiddie was succeeded by Governor
Fauquier, a polished freethinker, who found it necessary to dissolve the
Assembly on account of the famous resolutions, in advocating which Henry
declared that “Caesar had his Brutus, Charles I. his Cromwell, and George III. —
may profit by their example.” Jefferson pronounced this debate “most bloody,”
but he was young then, and perhaps a little careless in his choice of words.