and to hear the melancholy Jacques mora- | fact that twelve dozen packs of playing lizing in his forest of canvas trees.

cards are entered upon the inventory, would seem to imply. But let us enter the Ballroom, the apartment no doubt which was oftenest seen by the world. We are surprised by the spaciousness of this room. It

As the Palace, at the date of which we now speak, was the focus of all that was gay and fashionable in Williamsburg, some account of it drawn from authentic sources may be favorably received. That it was a build- is warmed by a large Dutch stove and lighted ing of some pretensions to architectural ele- by three magnificent chandeliers of glass crysgance may be inferred from its being men- tal with six branches each. And from either tioned by Burnaby as one of the best in the side their most gracious Majesties, the King country. The main portion of it was long and Queen, look down upon us from richlyago destroyed by fire, the wings being all gilt picture frames. By the way, how many that is now left of so much style and com- gatherings of the beauty and chivalry of the fort. I happen, however, to have in my the Old Dominion did not their Majesties possession quite a package of curious docu- see in this old Ball-room, what stately and ments throwing some light upon its internal high-born ladies moved along its polished economy during the administration of Nor- floors in the measured sweep of the minuet borne Berkeley, Lord Botetourt, the last but or bounded throughout its entire extent to one, and perhaps the most beloved, of our the lively music of the Virginia reel! Fair colonial governors, who died under its roof creatures! Shades of departed great grand in the year 1770. These documents present mothers, we pause a moment to do homage a full and minute inventory of the furniture, to your modesty and decorum as exhibited wardrobe, equipages and retinue of his Lord- in these desolate and forgotten dances! If ship, and from them may be obtained a much the age in which you lived was one of immore accurate idea of the man himself than moderate tippling and inordinate love of play, can be gathered from all his official acts and an age of sherry and spadille, it was an age gubernatorial speeches. By the aid of these at least of propriety in the dance, and lookrelics, I will, therefore, play the cicerone ing back to it we see nothing to call out for the moment and not only conduct you such satire as Lord Byron has directed at into the apartments of the Palace, but intro- the Waltz or the ridicule with which such duce you to its lordly proprietor. In ap- smaller Juvenals as the author of the proaching it from the Main Street of the tiphar Papers" have invested the Polka. town we walk through a double row of ca- But I promised to usher you into the prestalpa trees, the branches of which upon the ence of the Governor and we will therefore King's birth-night were always hung with go into the Library, where we may imagine variegated lanterns which cast around a him to pass his mornings in reading or in flood of rosy light, for the benefit of all who correspondence. There he sits in state or went up to join in the revelry at head quar- at least in comfort. It is the only room in ters. As we enter, we find ourselves in a the Palace that boasts a carpet and is hung spacious hall ornamented with ten large around with a variety of engravings, of which globe lamps and ten luxurious mahogany says the inventory, there are not less than elbow chairs with red damask cushions and twenty. His lordship rises to receive us backs. We pass into the parlour for the recep- most graciously and with a bow that he has tion of visitors which contains card tables of learned to make in the saloons of George the mahogany, a writing table of walnut, two mir- Third. He is dressed in a plain suit of brown rors, a fine couch and two leather-covered sateen, with a plain wig, though upon occasmoking chairs. There are maps of Vir- sions of ceremony he is wont to appear in ginia and North America hanging upon the very brave apparel as we shall presently walls. As his lordship was a bachelor, it is show you. A servant in livery is immed probable that the parlor was little used by ately summoned and despatched to the cella him, except when the card-tables were to bring up a bottle of the best wine such as brought into requisition. That this may is marked in the schedule "Mr. Fauquier' have been many evenings in the week, the Madeira," for it is foreign to the Governor's

"Po

savoir vivre to suffer his guests to go away did kind, of Gold and Silver Tissue and covwithout a glass. While the servant is gone, let us lift up the curtains which cover the shelves of the Library and see what books they con

tain.

ered with embroidery; fifty-six ruffled shirts, innumerable small clothes of satin and velvet, six wigs, a like number of hats, three black cockades, showing his Lordship to have It is not a very large collection (the Cata- been a Federalist by anticipation, a hundred logue calls for 320 volumes) but it is suffi- or so of cambric and silk handkerchiefsciently miscellaneous to please all tastes. was not this a magnificent fit-out to be handIn the classics it can show but six authors, ed over to a body-servant, as his Lordship's Cicero, Demosthenes, Cæsar, Virgil, Pliny was to one Marsham who went back to Engand Epictetus. Of French literature, we land with his finery and no doubt played find Voltaire, Molière, Fenelon, Montes-"High Life below Stairs" in it with great quieu and the letters and memoirs of Madam success? Of the wine-cellar, it will suffice de Maintenon. Shakespeare, Milton and to say that in addition to 162 dozen of assortPope, certainly a glorious trio, are the only ed wines, a quantity of arrack and a hogspoets in his own language that the Governor head of rum, it held 6 pipes of fine old Macommunes with. His philosophers are Locke deira; and that this goodly stock was not kept and Bacon, he reads history in Raleigh, for mere State occasions is abundantly shown Hume, Smollett, Rapin, Robertson, and that by this significant entry in the inventoryof Virginia in Stith. Of fiction there is not Memorandum. "In the Binn Cellar-14 much and scarcely more in theology, though gross of empty bottles." the divines are better represented than the It will distress the sensibilities of the connovelists there being eight volumes of the noisseur in wines, to know that not one drop sermons of Sherlock and Atterbury to be set of this precious stock now remains in Virgioff against Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones. nia-the whole having been sent, by the diThe rest of the books comprise plays, lexi-rection of the Duke of Beaufort, the residucons, statutes, military pamphlets, &c. Among ary legatee under the Governor's will, to these et cetera the catalogue quaintly men- England where it has probably tickled the tions 1 Ignorant Philosopher." Lord Bot- palates and caused to ache the heads of his etourt was fortunate in not having more. It Grace's descendants ever since. would be hard to find a modern library without a dozen. But the servant has come with Mr. Fauquier's Madeira, and lest we should make our morning call at the Palace an unreasonably long one, we will sip a glass with the Governor and take our leave.

Such was a Colonial Governor, and such, as I have attempted to sketch it, was the Colonial Society of Virginia. A time was at hand when an entire change was to be effected-when old things were to pass away and all things were to become new. The As I did not venture to conduct you into knell of this departed system was rung in the forbidden apartments above stairs or be- the tocsin of the Revolution. With that exlow-the chambers or the wine-cellar-and citing period came strange alterations in the as their contents, carefully set down in the social circles and in the general appearance documents to which I have referred, embra- of the Commonwealth. Some of the old ced the entire wardrobe and stock of liquors mansions were burned down, others were of the lamented nobleman, you will perhaps despoiled, a bayonet thrust from one of Arindulge me in giving the statistics of them. nold's drunken grenadiers shattered a mirror No fine gentleman of whom we have any that had been imported from France, and a account-whether his contemporary Lord subsequent act of legislation as readily swept Clive who had linen enough sent out to In- away the Established Church, the doctrine dia for his personal use to have supplied a of entails, indeed every vestige of Feudalism. company of the Household Troops, nor that from the land. The lumbering old chariots, hero of the toilet in later days, Beau Brum- to borrow a phrase of the elder Mr. Weller, mell, surpassed Lord Botetourt in the rich- have been "taken off the road"-the last of ness and profusion of his clothing. Twenty the cocked-hats has been gathered to its paseven coats, most of them of the most splen- ternal beavers, and the ridiculous old peri

wigs have long since gone to keep company and I think it would have puzzled Aladdin with Berenice's hair. The change though to evoke such illumination from his Wondersudden, was not instantaneous. The aboli- ful Lamp. Nor is the age in which we live tion of primogeniture rendered it no longer without a poetry of its own. practicable to retain in the same family the Telegraph which we use for the transmission vast landed possessions of the gentry, yet it of intelligence, has been well denominated required years to effect a division of the soil the girdle of Puck which that tricksy sprite among any considerable number of proprie- promised to put around the earth in forty tors. Meanwhile some of the old gentle- minutes; and the hidden significance of the men, finding it quite impossible either to re- steam-engine has been eloquently recognised trench their expenditures within such limits by the imaginative child of song. "He sees," as the new order of things made necessary, as a nervous writer has expressed it, "that or to practise an agricultural economy which machines contain in them a poetic meaning; their fathers had never dreamt of, went on that they present forceful and colossal images after the old fashion, serenely getting poorer of power, of iron will and iron necessity; that and poorer every day, riding over their im- in annihilating time and space, 'yoking their poverished acres with a pride that seemed cars with whirlwinds and the northern blast,' only to increase as their fortunes decayed, they gather round them the double interest and doing the honors of Castle Rackrent with of fact and fiction; that a locomotive engine the elegance which belonged to more pros- which looks tame enough at rest, in two minperous times, till finally they died, leaving utes rushes into poetry, and with its flag of their affairs in so tangled and hopeless a con- flame, passes through the most beautiful dition as utterly to ruin their heirs, Execu- country less like an intruder than a monarch; tors, Administrators and assigns. Fuit Ilium while in a dream of beauty walks the waters et ingens gloria Hectoris! The race is gone of the summer sea the great steamship, or and we are a new people. For one I am not wrestles like a demon of kindred power with disposed to lament the disappearance of those the angry billows!" old manners, nor to think with the author of In contrasting thus rapidly the Old time. the Age of Bronze, that "all old times are with the New, it becomes us not to lose sight good." We are in some respects better than of the lesson such a contrast enforces-that our ancestors, and it is certain that our age to whom much is given, of them shall much is greatly in advance of theirs. We have be required—that with augmented facilities more general intelligence, far greater com- for labour and new and widening channels of forts from the application of science to the useful arts, indeed innumerable blessings to which they were strangers. I think no one will deny that our freedom of religious opinion secures to us a more active faith and a purer Christianity than obtained under the Establishment when the parson too often set the parish a pleasant example in sinning. The well filled shelves of the room above us attest the literary superiority of our own. day: no such libraries were accessible to the people of Virginia during the last century-indeed, if we consider how vastly the literature of England has been enriched within a hundred and fifty years, we may say that the Bodleian itself was not then equal to it. The soft and brilliant gas-light which dis-bag pipes are of this nature. Wakes or vigils were inplays every object that surrounds us with the distinctness of noonday, is something certainly that was never imagined at that time,

thought, it is our duty to work for the physical and moral advancement of the human race with energy and strength of will-and that historical studies are only pursued with advantage when they teach us to emulate the virtues of those who have gone before as we walk among their heroic forms in the dusky dominion of the past.

CHRISTMAS WAITS.

In

"Christmas Waits are said to be derived from those choirs of angels that attended at the birth of Christ. imitation of these, shepherds in ancient times, used to usher in Christmas with music and carol: the pastora.i

or rural music performed by the Calabrian shepherds, en

stituted as festivals, on the days of dedication of the

churches, or on those Saints' days to whom the buildings were devoted, and commenced on the evenings preceding those days."-Busby's Anecdotes.

CREDULITY OF THE TIMES.

credulity, he follows the ignis fatuus whereever it may lead.

Skepticism anciently wore the specious.

Plato defined man to be "a biped without garb of Philosophy with which it gained adfeathers." He was however soon convinced mission into the porticos of the learned and of his error by the facetious and eccentric Di- the palaces of the great. Eloquence arrayed ogenes, who, mercilessly divesting a chicken her gaudy ornaments and displayed her of its covering, placed it in the Philosopher's flowers of rhetoric in its behalf, and stern portico and, with an air of conscious triumph, logic did not disdain to wield the sword of exclaimed; "Behold your man." argument and do battle in its cause.

Though Plato's definition, as a whole, finds Pyrrho stands at the head of Skeptical favor with but few at the present day, yet a Philosophers. The favorite tenet of his sect portion of it, and that too the exceptive part, was the denial of everything-the rejection often proves a safe-guard against misfortune. of all proof of real existence. With them, For if man wore a coat of feathers" in reality was a word without meaning and the these days of rancorous excitement and evidence of the senses was all a delusion. strong sectional jealousy, doubtless it would The solution of every thing was referred be quite fashionable to supply him now and to the imagination. If one brought his head then with a little of the dark and adhesive in contact with a post, it was but a vagary mixture, for the manufacture of which of the fancy. The contact was an illusion"The old North State" is so celebrated. the post, a shadow, and the consequent pain, But man is not what Plato would have a mere twinge of nervous sensibility whose him to be. He came fresh from the Crea- origin was traced to the imagination. So tor's hands stamped with the image of Divin- much did Pyrrho doubt the existence of ity and, in a limited degree, partaking of His matter, that he disregarded the points of exalted qualities and attributes. A sublime, swords and arrows, and a body guard was Godlike intellect is his distinguishing charac- kept near him to prevent his walking into teristic, comprehensive alike of the great and rivers, down precipices and through trees the small-the lofty and the humble. With it, and houses. he grasps things earthly and things heaven- Like all things else, Skepticism changes ly-holds free converse with the sun and with the times. Anciently it was an error moon, while the veriest insect is his com- of the head-now it is an obliquity of the panion—the stars are his playthings and the heart. Its former extravagances provoke a tide-kissed pebbles, his books of antiquity. smile-its present wickedness extorts a tear. In his tempest-driven chariot, he rides upon Then, it was too abstruse and metaphysical the mountain wave and plays familiar with for the comprehension of the vulgar-now, the hoary locks of Leviathan. He scales it is equally adapted to all classes. The suthe snow-crowned Alps and in search of perficial fall victims to its dexterous sophisglittering gold digs deep into the inmost re-try-the ambitious are dazzled by the litecesses of the earth. With eagle eye he rary fame that encircles the brows of the penetrates illimitable space, and "treads successful few-and the depraved and licenwith fearless step where angels stand abash- tious yield to its enticement, because it ed." Such are some of the vocations of pours a more than Cimmerian darkness over man-proud, disdainful, aspiring man-and the realms of morality.

yet he often presents a mass of inconsisten- During the last century, Hume, Gibbon cies-a mere bundle of contradictions. At and Voltaire were the champions of Skeptione time he is the very embodiment and im- cism, the Curiatii of the moral arena; but personation of skepticism-at another, the they were put to flight and slain by Beattie, easy victim of his credulity. He doubts in Reid and Campbell, the noble trio, the Horathe face of the clearest evidence and, at the tii of Scotland. But there is one who desame time, believes the most palpable ab- serves more than a passing notice-one who surdities. Veiled in skepticism, he sees should stand by himself that we may mark not the very sun in the Heavens-duped by well the follies and mourn over the wayward

ness of his youth. Behold the gifted Shel-moon and reading fortunes from the handley, whose lyre is now sounding in sweet which even at this day have their thousands poetic strains around every fireside and of votaries all over our land, our readers, of altar. Soaring wild and devious from the course, excepted. Routed by the Quakers, safe and beaten track, for a moment he exults these malignant spirits betook themselves in his strength-then falters-then plunges with greater zeal and activity to the home headlong into the gulf of ruin! Genius and of the Puritans. Here they met with a talent were his. He nestled in the bosom more severe and unrelenting opposition, and of affection and, for a time, enjoyed the sun- no leaf of American History is so revolting shine of public favor. He spread his pin- as that which records the trials of New Engions where the eagle dared not stretch her land Witchcraft. wing; but soon "weary, exhausted, longing, The history of the last twenty years is a panting, sighing" he sank lower and lower, series of chapters on Phrenology, Mesmeruntil his gaudy plumage was bedraggled in ism, Clairvoyance, Animal Electricity, and the mire of a dark and gloomy Skepticism. the last though not the least humbug of all, His sad fate may well touch the heart of the Spiritual Rappings. And here we have the coldest and most obdurate. Pride and igno- edifying spectacle of a multitude of the old rance and folly may boast, but truth and honor and the young, the grave and the gay, the and humanity must weep over it, while sim- rich and the poor, gray-headed judges, illusple faith and Christian philanthrophy will turn trious senators, staid matrons and even minaway in anguish and despair. isters of religion alternately excited to enAnd here a word may be uttered which must thusiasm-even phrensy-or standing aghast cause every generous heart to heat with pride with wonder and astonishment at the stupid and pleasure. It is, that the pages of history tricks of one of the grossest species of jugare rarely stained with the name of woman glery that was ever practiced upon poor, amid the ranks of skepticism. Foreign from gullible man. Let no one hereafter quote her gentle and confiding nature is that cold "Time's noblest offspring is ever the last." and selfish philosophy, which would divest The lie has been given to it and it should the human heart of every noble sentiment-be erased from the pages of poetry. of every pure and holy affection.

Whether another chapter is to be added Credulity is more widely diffused than remains to be seen. We believe there will skepticism. Turn to classic Greece and be-that it is already in the hands of the Rome and see the monuments of super- printer. But at the same time we hope not. stition, the creations of heathen mythology. We devoutly wish that the History of PopHear their oracles uttering dark sayings and ular Superstition may be at an end-that the reading the future from the entrails of beasts light which science is shedding upon the and the flight of birds as well to the Hagi world and the truth which "an open Bible" as Plebeian. Pass to the land of Zoroaster reveals from heaven will ere long create and Mohammed-over all, the Demon of su- an atmosphere of "intelligent, independent perstition, the offspring of credulity sits thought" before which the mists of skepti brooding as with the pall of everlasting cism and credulity shall flee away. Then night. there will be a consummation of purity and Credulity, in the form of popular super- peace, of happiness and prosperity on earth, stition, took its rise upon our shores, in the greater and more glorious than that for land of Penn and under the name of Witch- which Jefferson wrote, Henry spoke, Wash craft; but the sober uncompromising Qua-ington fought, and Warren bled.

kers soon drove it from its hiding places

and swept it away as with the besom of destruction, and from that day to this "neither demon nor hag has ridden through the air of that quiet region on goat or broomstick." The worst arts of superstition extend only to the believing in spells, consulting the

1854.

NELLA