England depended upon the colonies for much of the naval stores, of the potash, and of the pearlash which she needed every year. Mines of iron and of copper had been opened both in the middle colonies and in the south. The colonists made their own brick for building, and their own paper and glass, as well as their own coarse stuffs for clothing, and many of their own hats of beaverskin. Substantial houses and fine, sightly streets sprang up in the towns which stood at the chief seaports; and in the country spacious country seats, solidly built, roomy, full of the simpler comforts of gentlefolk. The ships which took hides and fish and provisions to the West Indies brought sugar and molasses and wine and many a delicacy back upon their return, and the colonists ate and drank and bore themselves like other well-to-do citizens the world over. They were eager always to know what the London fashions were; there was as much etiquette to be observed upon quiet plantations in Virginia as in English drawing rooms. It was, indeed, touched with a certain beauty of its own, because of the provincial simplicity and frank neighborliness which went along with it; but it was grave and punctilious, and intended to be like London manners. There was as much formality and gayety “in the season” at Williamsburg, Virginia’s village capital, as in Philadelphia, the biggest, wealthiest, most stately town in the colonies. [Illustration: NASSAU HALL, PRINCETON COLLEGE, 1760] [Illustration: KING’S COLLEGE, NEW YORK, 1758]