were acquainted with him,--an esteem won by the simple,
unostentatious merit of his character, his liberal religious
sentiment, and his frank and cordial hospitality, which had the best
flavor of the good old housekeeping of St. Mary's,--a commendation
which every one conversant with that section of Maryland will
understand to imply what the Irish schoolmaster, in one of Carleton's
tales, calls "the hoighth of good living."

After my return from this excursion, I resolved to make a search
amongst the records at Annapolis, to ascertain whether any memorials
existed which might furnish further information in regard to the
events to which I had now got a clue. And here comes in a morsel of
official history which will excuse a short digression.

The Legislature had, about this time, directed the Executive to cause
a search through the government buildings, with a view to the
discovery of old state papers and manuscripts, which, having been
consigned, time out of mind, to neglect and oblivion, were known only
as heaps of promiscuous lumber, strewed over the floors of damp
cellars and unfrequented garrets. The careless and unappreciative
spirit of the proper guardians of our archives in past years had
suffered many precious folios and separate papers to be disposed of
as mere rubbish; and the not less culpable and incurious indolence of
their successors, in our own times, had treated them with equal
indifference. The attention of the Legislature was awakened to the
importance of this investigation by Mr. David Ridgely, the State
Librarian, and he was appointed by the Executive to undertake the
labor. Never did beagle pursue the chase with more steady foot than
did this eager and laudable champion of the ancient fame of the State
his chosen duty. He rummaged old cuddies, closets, vaults, and
cocklofts, and pried into every recess of the Chancery, the Land
Office, the Committee-Rooms, and the Council-Chamber, searching
up-stairs and down-stairs, wherever a truant paper was supposed to lurk.
Groping with lantern in hand and body bent, he made his way through
narrow passages, startling the rats from their fastnesses, where they
had been intrenched for half a century, and breaking down the thick
drapery--the Gobelin tapestry I might call it--woven by successive
families of spiders from the days of the last Lord Proprietary. The
very dust which was kicked up in Annapolis, as the old newspapers
tell us, at the passage of the Stam