Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1858-12-30
From the Baltimore American.
IN THE OLDEN T1ME.I
A LECTURE.
BY JOHN r. THOMPSON, ESQ.

BY JOHN R. THOMPSON, ESQ.
The third lecture of the course before the
Mercantile Library Association, was deliv-
cred last evening at the Universalist Church,
by John r. Thompson, ESQ, taking as his
subject, "Virginia in the Olden Time. -
It was interesting, instructive and amusing,
and we give space to quite full report.
Mr. Thompson commenced by saying that
there are few of us who have not felt in
some hour Of revery desire to see the world
as it will be centuries hence; to drink the
draught of Iamblichus and awake after the
lapse of ages to behold what the advancing
sciences and the accumulated knowledge of
men will have done for the globe we live
upon. And SO, [ fancy, very many have
experienced wish to be translated back in
to the past, and to witness the scenes and
incidents which transpired hundred years
ago-not the stirring events of battle, nor
the pageantries of courtly splendour, but
the ordinary life of a remote ancestry; how
they lived by their fresides and moved among
their fellow men and had their being with
in the narrow boundaries Of their homes. =
This feeling is strongest perhaps when one
walks through picture gallery or visits
some immemorial mansion, hallowed by the
associations of buried greatness, and half
expects to see the pompous old ladies and
gentlemen come down from the cracked can
vass which perpetuates their charms, or to
meet at some sudden turn the former occu-
pants of the antquatcd apartments. How
we should have delighted to talk with the
stately master Of the house, Of his every day
employments and anusements, of his tobac-
co crop, his fox-hunts, his last session in
the Burgesses- happiness would it not
have been to bask in the sunny radiance of
my Lady's smiles, she whose beauty, long
since become only a sad In Ncnaoriana and
who was the toast of many merry meetings
in the olden days.
For picture of the colonial society Of
Virginia. the materials are by no means
abundant, nor have they been collected to-
gether in any repository Mouldering away
4 in leaky garrets, hid beneath the dusty lids
of forgotten folios, they must be searched
after diligently and carefully gathered now,
or the future historian who would pictur-
esquely show us Old Virginia will perhaps
lament that we did not dispossess the rats of
memorials which are being gnawed to pieces
at this moment in the old country houses of
the tide-water region. No historian of the
early Commonwealth has given US any
glimpse of the domestic life Of the people.
We shall find as little of this in their books,
as in the pleasant chronicles of Sir John
Froissart The concluding paragraph of
Stith's famous work assigns singular rea-
son for his omission of such picturesque ma
terial 81 intended" says he, ''to have
added several other very curious Papers,
and original Pieces of Records, but per-
ceive, with no small surprise, that some OF
my countrymen (and those too persons of
high fortune and Distinction) seemed to be
much alarmed, and to grudge that COM
plete history Of their own country should
run to more than one volume, and cost them
more than half Pistole. [ was, therefore,
obliged to restrain my hand for fear of en-
hancing the price to the immense charge
and irreparable Damage of these very gen
erous and public spirited gentlemen
In view of this want of material, and the
failure on the part of our Virginia historians
to supply the missing chapter, which has
but recently been written for England by
the brilliant, the profound, the gifted, the
delightful Macaulay, [ confess [ approach
the subject with real distrust, but you will
not, l am sure, reject my offering for its
poverty ssnor refuse to regard with curious
interest, the few fossils which shall bring
out from the exuvi;e of an extinct civiliza-
ton, even though [ should not reconstruct
\ the Saurian with the skill of an Agassiz
A new interest has lately been given to
the social life of Virginia in the olden time,
by the great satirical novelist of England
who has undertaken to represent it in the
page of fiction. The dreadful Mr. Thack-
cray has brought the habits and peculiari-
James and the Potomac in days gone by,
to the notice of that large world which has
learned to enjoy his delightful ill-nature and
charming cynicism. So far, indeed, the
novel has not treated much of the ancient
Dominion, and we may be permitted to hope
that its sketches Of society are more faithful
than its history and geography are true
Mr.. Washington is described as having been
engaged to Mrs. Martha Custis before he
had ever seen that lovely and estimable
widow, an anachronism of the affections
: which L trust Mr.. Everett will correct in his
Forthcoming Mount Vernon Papers. Mr..
5 Benjamin Franklin is represented as having
, been the guest Of Governor Dinwiddie, at
Williamsburg, when we know that he never
visited that antique capital; and we are led
by Mr.. Thackeray to believe, in the face of
degrees of latitude and Capt. John Smith S
f map, that the distance from Williamsburg
to Mount Vernon was but an easy mornings