nts, of a race of forest-born
monarchs: now appealing to the antiquary in the mouldering records of
the County Court offices, and now, silently but eloquently, looking out
imploringly in the ruins of churches and tombs, which meet the eye of
the traveller, as he muses upon the faith and fortunes of generations
long departed.

Rapid as is the progress of steam upon those waters, which, in giving up
their Indian patronymies, gave up the bold hunter and his lithe canoe to
the progress of "manifest destiny," few are those who pass the venerable
site of the first colony in Virginia, Jamestown, without paying a
tribute of a sigh, and perchance a tear, to that solitary tower which is
still standing a mute watcher amid the few almost illegible tombs,--all
that are left of a busy population long departed;--the germ, however, of
a great nation, whose name is even now "a watchword to the earth."

The rank grass waves above those mouldering stones--the green corn of
summer rustles in the breeze, which seems, it its "hollow, solemn
memnonian, but saintly swell," to have "swept the field of mortality for
a hundred centuries,"[C] and that lone, ruined, vine-crested tower,
stands, the only memorial of the house, and the Temple of God. Gone are
the altars where knelt the adventurer and the exile--high-born chivalry
and manly beauty--gentle blood and noble pedigree,--and where rose
"humble voices," and beat "pure hearts," approaching the throne of the
heavenly grace! Jamestown is a city of the dead, and precious is the
dust of its pathless cemetery!

When we turn "from the wreck of the past that has perished," and stand
beside those monuments which have withstood the "corroding tooth of
time," and still stand invested with the sacred and solemn beauty of
antiquity, we approach in the venerating spirit of worshippers, and
render our thank-offerings at their base. Such is likely to be the
feeling with the pilgrim antiquary, as he stands for the first time
beneath the shadows of that venerable cruciform pile, St. John's Church,
Hampton, which has braved "the battle and the breeze" of nearly two
centuries; and then, when he crosses its worn threshold, and treads its
echoing aisles, the wish must arise, involuntarily, to know something
of the history of a spot "so sad, so fair."

With the exception of Jamestown, there is no portion of Virginia
possessing as much historic interest as Hampton, and its vicinity.
Hampton is the county seat of