the Rialto, and the palaces of merchant princes,
Norfolk was another edition of Venice. The canoe was our gondola, and
"_yo heave oh_" were our echoes of Tasso. A bold stream, that would
float a vessel of one hundred tons, cut Granby and Bank streets in two,
and just halted on the west side of Church, where it was almost met by
another furious stream from Newton's Creek. At Town Bridge a torrent
raged that was not to be crossed until the tide fell. Freemason, between
Brewer and Granby, presented a sea deep enough to float a vessel of one
hundred tons. Our Rialto on Granby was not erected till eighteen or
twenty years later; and I remember our fathers were so proud of it, that
they invited strangers to see it. It took, for a time, the shine from
the Navy Yard. The health of the town ranked the lowest. The tombstones
in old St. Paul's tell of the number of captains of vessels and trading
merchants who died here. The letters of Wirt show the prevalent belief
that an acclimating process was just as necessary here as at New Orleans
and Havana, or on the coast of Africa. It was the fear of yellow fever,
perpetually dinned in his ears by his country friends, who but echoed
the popular belief, that drove Wirt away. Such was Norfolk, not
enveloped in the mists of tradition, but such as she was, when Mr.
Tazewell came to reside here in 1802.

He lived to behold a very different state of things. He lived to see it
one of the cleanest cities in the world, and to see more miles of paved
streets in Norfolk than any other city south of the Potomac can boast
of; and those streets lighted up every night with a brilliancy equal to
that which a rejoicing people, thirteen years later than 1802, kindled
in commemoration of the victory of New Orleans, and of the peace with
Great Britain. He lived to see the Negro population as well clad, and
the female part of it as fully crinolined, as the great body of the
respectable white people of 1802, and worshipping every Sabbath in
churches of their own, better and more costly than the best church of
that day; while the white people have added, and are adding every day,
church to church and chapel to chapel, some of which are even elegant in
their architecture, and all comfortable in their arrangements beyond the
conceptions of that day. He lived to see, instead of three men worth one
hundred thousand each, three men, one of whom he was, whose united
wealth would reach a million, besides many others