It dwelt upon the banks of the Chesapeake and of great rivers; ships dropped their anchors before its very doors.

Now and again the planter followed his tobacco aboard.

The sands did not then run so swiftly through the hourglass; if the voyage to England was long, why, so was life! The planters went, sold their tobacco,--Sweet-scented, E.Dees, Oronoko, Cowpen, Non-burning,--talked with their agents, visited their English kindred; saw the town, the opera, and the play,--perhaps, afar off, the King; and returned to Virginia and their plantations with the last but one novelty in ideas, manner, and dress.

Of their sons not a few were educated in English schools, while their wives and daughters, if for the most part they saw the enchanted ground only through the eyes of husband, father, or brother, yet followed its fashions, when learned, with religious zeal.

In Williamsburgh, where all men went on occasion, there was polite enough living: there were the college, the Capitol, and the playhouse; the palace was a toy St.James; the Governors that came and went almost as proper gentlemen, fitted to rule over English people, as if they had been born in Hanover and could not speak their subjects' tongue.
So it was that the assembly which had risen to greet Mr.Jaquelin's latest guests, besides being sufficiently well born, was not at all ill bred, nor uninformed, nor untraveled.