spent his life.  He is always an aristocrat of the most uncompromising stamp, and has a contemptuous disdain and intolerance for every form of democracy.  Poor white people have not the slightest chance of his good opinion.  The pedigree and history of his master’s family possess an epic dignity in his imagination; and the liberty he takes with facts concerning them amounts to a grand poetical hyperbole.  He represents their wealth in past times to have amounted to something of a fabulous superfluity, and their magnificence so unbounded, that he stares at you in describing it, as if its excess astonished himself.

When we now questioned our venerable conductor, to learn what he could tell us of the old Proprietary Mansion, he said, in his way, he “membered it, as if it was built only yesterday:  he was fotch up so near it, that he could see it now as if it was standing before him:  if he couldn’t pint out where it stood, it was time for him to give up:  it was a mighty grand brick house,”—­laying an emphasis on brick, as a special point in his notion of its grandeur; and then he added, with all the gravity of which his very solemn visage was a copious index, that “Old Master Baltimore, who built it, was a real fine gentleman.  He knowed him so well!  He never gave anything but gold to the servants for tending on him.  Bless you! he wouldn’t even think of silver!  Many a time has he given me a guinea for waiting on him.”

This account of Old Master Baltimore, and his magnificent contempt of silver, and the intimacy of our patriarch with him, rather startled us, and I began to fear that the story of the house might turn out to be as big a lie as the acquaintance with the Lord Proprietary,—­for Master Baltimore had then been dead just one hundred and twenty-one years.  But we went on with him, and were pleasantly disappointed when he brought us upon a hill that sloped down to the Mattapony, and there traced out for us, by the depression of the earth, the visible lines of an old foundation of a large building, the former existence of which was further demonstrated by some scattered remains of the old imported brick of the edifice which were imbedded in the soil.

This spot had a fine outlook upon the Bay, and every advantage of locality to recommend its choice for a domestic establishment.  We could find nothing to indicate the old fort except the commanding character of the hill with reference to the river, which might warrant a conjecture as to its position.  I believe that the house was included within the ramparts of the fortification, as I perceive in some of the old records that the fortification itself was called the Mattapony House, which was once beleaguered and taken by Captain John Coode and Colonel Jowles.