The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1897-01-29
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resting in the English fashion of the
Georgian period on lofty fiuted columns
has shed the plaster from its ceiling in
big cakes upon the rotting steps. The
Virginia squires never grasped the
rudiments Of landscape gardening.
An acre or so of old turf shaded with
forest trees and sprinkled with few
exotics filled, and upon the whole filed
with every requirement of dignity and
comfort.
Not even this relic of f,rmor days, how
ever, has escaped the aggressive in
road which nature, abandoned to itself
makes beneath these southern suns.
For the briars and weeds from the half
titled fields without have leaped the
broken palings of the lawn and are dis
putting every yard of ground with the
old sod that seems to have in it the re-
sisting power of century's growth
and care.
And yet perhaps it is the inside of
the house that awakens the saddest
memories. Each chamber in it's musty
silence has some tale of its own to tell,
and the tale told within these particu-
lar walls is not that of single family,
but of hundreds, story of a whole
race who once were powerful, were
leading factor in the life, not ofa prov
ince, but OF a nation. and who have,
within a period comparatively brief,
passed out of existence. The nails are
still sticking in the walls from which
used to hang those homely but none
the less treasured paintings Of gentle
men in wigs and swords, and ladies
who danced with Braddock's fated Off
GERS at Williamsburg. 1t needs not the
memory of these vaniohed symbols to
mind us how Virginia in prosperity
and political influence was once the
foremost of American commonwealths
and had much more than her share in
a numerical sense, considerable though
this was, in guiding and shaping the
early history of the United States.
Virginia as a state is, upon the
whole, by no means unprosperous.
We have been looking at her mori-
bund and historic half That other
portion, which represents her increase
and prosperity, which fattens cattle
and grows corn with moderate success
which delves for coal and iron, rears
blast furnaces and factories and sum-
mer hotels, though beautiful indeed by
nature, belongs otherwise to the COM
monplace tale of modern progress, and
has no connection with the point Of
view from which this paper is written.
But this pleasant and prosperous wes-
tern half that hugs the foothills of the
Blue Ridge and lies amid the shadows
Of the Alleghanies is not, to any ap-
preciable extent, the Virginia of the
days when her opinion was listenedto
by sister colonies and sister States
with Difference that reads strangely
now
1t is this old Virginia, this famous
cradle Of the English race beyond the
sea, that now lies, to so great an ex-
tent, an almost hopeless desert, or
what, compared to any other agricul-
tural country in the civilized world, is
practically desert-and it is likely
to remain So 1t is difficult to con-
ceive, for those who really know it,
any combination of circumstances that
can, within measurable time, arrest the
decay Of a large portion of Virginia
east of the Piedmont counties,-a re-
gion, roughly speaking, half the size
of England, and once prominently the
England of the New World, where the
manners and customs, the sports, and
even the prejudices of the mother coun-. i.
try were reproduced with fidelity
that in colonial days was almost pa
thctic, and the traces of which are even
yet not wholly extinct sartn'yhfy
Re0iew.
IN THE REGINNIN.S