ith sand to
perfect the delusion. Thus you can understand the lovely and the
annoying of which I have spoken. When the inhabitants wish to take a
drive, there is a plank road about six miles long, which enables them to
enjoy this luxury. If they are not content with this road, they must
seek their pleasure with the carriages up to their axles in sand. There
are three old royalist buildings still standing--viz., the Episcopal
church, the Court-house, and the Exchange. The first reminds one warmly
of the dear old parish church in England, with its heavy oak pulpit and
the square family pews, and it sobers the mind as it leads the memory to
those days when, if the church was not full of activity, it was not full
of strife--when parishioners were not brought to loggerheads as to the
colour of the preacher's gown--when there was no triangular duel (_vide_
Marryat) as to candles, no candles, and lit candles--when, in short, if
there was but moderate zeal about the substance, there was no
quarrelling about the shadows of religion; and if we were not blessed
with the zeal of a Bennet, we were not cursed with the strife of a
Barnabas. At the time the colonists kicked us out of this place, by way
of not going empty-handed, we bagged the church-bells as a
trophy--(query, is not robbing a church sacrilege?)--and they eventually
found their way into a merchant's store in England, where they remained
for years. Not long since, having been ferreted out, they were replaced
in their original position, and now summon the Republicans of the
nineteenth century to their devotions as lustily as they did the
Royalists in the eighteenth. There is nothing remarkable in the two
other buildings, except their antiquity, and the associations arising
therefrom.[AG]

One of the most striking sights here is the turn-out of the Fire
Companies on any gala day. They consist of eight companies, of one
hundred each; their engines are brilliantly got up, and decorated
tastefully with flowers; banners flying; the men, in gay but
business-like uniform, dragging their engines about, and bands playing
away joyously before them. The peculiarity of the Charleston firemen is
that, instead of being composed of all the rowdies of the town, as is
often the case in the large eastern cities, they are, generally
speaking, the most respectable people in the community. This may partly
be accounted for by the militia service being so hard, and the fines
for the neglect of