At our right hand, soon after leaving Pilgrim Hall, we see a large building with a handsome brick facade, standing a little back from the street, and fronted by a small park. This is the County Court House, erected in 1820, and remodeled in 1857. It is one of the finest buildings of the kind in the State, and the judges of the different courts give it precedence in point of beauty, convenience, etc., over all they visit. It has two entrances. The northerly one leads to a marble corridor, from which is the stairway to the large court room above, admittance to witness rooms and the Third District Court. The southerly entrance is to a corridor paved with Vermont marble, and from which leads a flight of stairs for the court, the bar, officers and jurymen, main court room, district attorney’s office, and grand jury room. On the left, below, is the room of the Clerk of Courts, with the room of the County Treasurer opposite; beyond are rooms for various uses together with that of the County Commissioners, and the Law Library. The Library opens from the Commissioner’s room, and also connects by a stairway with the upper corridor. [Illustration: PRISCILLA.] The New Registry Building [Illustration: Illustrated capital] Opposite the Court House, on Russell street, in 1904, the County erected a very fine and conveniently appointed fireproof building for the Probate Court and Registry of Deeds. The latter is on the lower floor, with a large hall for the records and necessary desks and tables to facilitate the examination of the books. There are also commodious rooms for the Register and his assistants and the corps of recorders. [Illustration: THE NEW REGISTRY BUILDING.] In the Registry of Deeds are the earliest records of Plymouth Colony, in the handwriting of the men who are now held in reverence the world over for their courage in braving the perils of an unknown sea and an equally unknown shore, to face the dangers of savage men and savage beasts, in their constancy to what they believed to be their duty, and for planting on this spot the great principles of a government by the people,— “A church without a bishop, A state without a king.” Here is their writing, some of it quaint and crabbed, some fair and legible. Here, on these very pages, rested the hands fresh from handling the sword and the musket or the peaceful implements of husbandry, of Bradford and Brewster and Standish and others of that heroic band. Here is the original laying-out of the first street,—Leyden street. Here is the plan of the plots of ground first assigned for yearly use, which they called, in the tinge of the Dutch tongue they had acquired in their long residence in Holland, “meersteads.” Here are the simple and yet wise rules—laws they can hardly be called—laid down for the government of the infant colony.