tent.

Robert was conscious of a change in atmosphere that was not a mere
matter of temperature. Keen, commercial New York was gone. Here,
people talked of politics and the land. The men who came into
Williamsburg on horseback or in their high coaches were owners of
great plantations, where they lived as patriarchs, and feudal
lords. The human stock was purely British and the personal customs and
modes of thought of the British gentry had been transplanted.

"I like it," said Grosvenor. "I feel that I've found England again."

"There appears to be very little town life," said Robert. "It seems
strange that Williamsburg is so small, when Virginia has many more
people than New York or Pennsylvania or Massachusetts."

"They're spread upon the land," said Willet. "I've been in Virginia
before. They don't care much about commerce, but you'll find that a
lot of the men who own the great plantations are hard and good
thinkers."

Robert soon discovered that in Virginia a town was rather a meeting
place for the landed aristocracy than a commercial center. The arrival
of the British troops and of Americans from other colonies brought
much life into the little capital. The people began to pour in from
the country houses, and the single street was thronged with the best
horses and the best carriages Virginia could show, their owners,
attended by swarms of black men and black women whose mouths were
invariably stretched in happy grins, their splendid white teeth
glittering.

There was much splendor, a great mingling of the fine and the tawdry,
as was inevitable in a society that maintained slavery on a large
scale. Nearly all the carriages had been brought from London, and they
were of the best. When their owners drove forth in the streets or the
country roundabout they were escorted by black coachmen and footmen in
livery. The younger men were invariably on horseback, dressed like
English country gentlemen, and they rode with a skill and grace that
Robert had never before seen equaled. The parsons, as in England, rode
with the best, and often drank with them too.

It was a proud little society, exclusive perhaps, and a little bit
provincial too, possibly, but it was soon to show to the world a group
of men whose abilities and reputation and service to the state have
been unequaled, perhaps, since ancient Athens. One warm afternoon as
Robert walked down the single street with Tayoga and Grosvenor, he saw
a very young man, o