pe, from old manorial estates to
field sports, and from improvident households to heroic beauties; and
among the freshest touches to the historical and social picture are
those bestowed by Irving in some of the most charming episodes of his
'Life of Washington.'

When the river on whose banks was destined to rise the capital of the
State received the name of the English monarch in whose reign and under
whose auspices the first settlers emigrated, and the Capes of the
Chesapeake were baptized by Newport for his sons Charles and Henry, the
storm that washed him beyond his proposed goal revealed a land of
promise, which thenceforth beguiled adventure and misfortune to its
shores. Captain John Smith magnified the scene of his romantic escape
from the savages: 'Heaven and earth,' he wrote, 'seemed never to have
agreed better to frame a place for man's commodious and delightful
habitation.' To the wonderful reports of majestic forests, rare wild
flowers, and strange creatures, such as the opossum, the hummingbird,
the flying squirrel, and the rattlesnake--to the pleasures of the chase,
and the curious traits of aboriginal life--were soon added the
attractions of civic immunities and possibilities--free trade, popular
legislative rule, and opportunities of profitable labor and social
advancement. Ere long, George Sandys, a highly educated employee of the
Government, was translating Ovid on the banks of the James river;
industry changed the face of the land; a choice breed of horses, the
tobacco culture, hunting, local politics, hospitality--churches after
the old English model, manor houses with lawns, bricks, and portraits
significant of ancestral models, justified the pioneer's declaration
that Virginia 'was the poor man's best country in the world.' Beautiful,
indeed, were the natural features of the country as described by the
early travellers; auspicious of the future of the people as it expanded
to the eye of hope, when the colony became part of a great and free
nation. Connected at the north and east, by thoroughfare and
watercourse, with the industrial and educated States of New England, the
fertile and commercial resources of New York, and the rich coal lands
and agricultural wealth of Pennsylvania; Maryland and the Atlantic
providing every facility to foreign trade, and the vast and then
partially explored domains of Kentucky and Ohio inviting the already
swelling tide of immigration, and their prolific valleys desti