These
meetings of the burgesses were the great social as well as political
event of the Old Dominion, and gave a gathering signal to the Virginian
gentry scattered far and wide on their lonely plantations. The capital
of the province was Williamsburg, a village of about a thousand
inhabitants, traversed by a straight and very wide street, and adorned
with various public buildings, conspicuous among which was William and
Mary College, a respectable structure, unjustly likened by Jefferson to
a brick kiln with a roof. The capitol, at the other end of the town, had
been burned some years before, and had just risen from its ashes. Not
far distant was the so-called Governor's Palace, where Dinwiddie with
his wife and two daughters exercised such official hospitality as his
moderate salary and Scottish thrift would permit.[162]
[Footnote 162: For a contemporary account of Williamsburg, Burnaby,
_Travels in North America_, 6. Smyth, _Tour in America_, I. 17,
describes it some years later.]
In these seasons of festivity the dull and quiet village was
transfigured. The broad, sandy street, scorching under a southern sun,
was thronged with coaches and chariots brought over from London at heavy
cost in tobacco, though soon to be bedimmed by Virginia roads and negro
care; racing and hard-drinking planters; clergymen of the Establishment,
not much more ascetic than their boon companions of the laity; ladies,
with manners a little rusted by long seclusion; black coachmen and
footmen, proud of their masters and their liveries; young cavaliers,
booted and spurred, sitting their thoroughbreds with the careless grace
of men whose home was the saddle.
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