palace, and deposited their fair burdens, and then rolled
rapidly away to await the breaking up of the ball. Young beaux, fairly
glittering with gold embroidery, with their handsome doublets looped
with the gayest ribbons, and their hair perfumed and oiled, and plaited
at the sides in the most captivating love-knots; their cheeks
beplastered with rouge, and their moustache carefully trimmed and
brushed, passed gracefully to and fro, through the vast hall, and looked
love to soft eyes that spake again. And those young eyes, how brightly
did they beam, and how freshly did the young cheeks of their lovely
owners blush, even above the rouge with which they were painted, as
they met the admiring glance of some favored swain bent lovingly upon
them! How graceful, too, the attitude which these fair maidens assumed,
with their long trails sweeping and fairly carpetting the floor, or when
held up by their tapering fingers, how proudly did they step, as they
crossed the room to salute the stately and dignified, but now smiling
Lady Frances Berkeley--and she the queenly centre of that vast throng,
leaning upon the arm of her noble and venerable husband, with what grace
and dignity she bowed her turbaned head in response to their
salutations; and with what a majestic air of gratified vanity did she
receive the courteous gratulations of the chivalrous cavaliers as they
wished her many returns of the happy day, and hoped that the hours of
her life would be marked by the lapse of diamond sands, while roses grew
under her feet!

Sir William Berkeley, of whose extraordinary character we know far more
than of any of the earlier governors of Virginia, was now in the evening
of his long and prosperous life. "For more than thirty years he had
governed the most flourishing country the sun ever shone upon,"[25] and
had won for himself golden opinions from all sorts of people. Happy for
him, and happy for his fame, if he had passed away ere he had become
"encompassed," as he himself expresses it, "with rebellion, like
waters." To all he had endeared himself by his firmness of character and
his suavity of manner. In 1659, he was called, by the spontaneous
acclaim of the people of Virginia, to assume the high functions of the
government, of which he had been deprived during the Protectorate, and,
under his lead, Virginia was the first to throw off her allegiance to
the Protector, and to declare herself the loyal realm of the banished
Charles. H