But while this old ruin thus suggests many an association with the olden time, there is nothing left to tell the antiquary of the condition and appearance of Jamestown, the first capital of Virginia. The island, as the narrow neck of land on which the town was built is still erroneously called, may yet be seen; but not a vestige of the simple splendour, with which colonial pride delighted to adorn it, remains to tell the story of its glory or destruction. And yet, to the eye and the heart of the colonist, this little town was a delight: for here were assembled the Governor and his council, who, with mimic pride, emulated the grandeur and the pageant of Whitehall. Here, too, were the burgesses congregated at the call of the Governor, who, with their stately wives and blooming daughters, contributed to the delight of the metropolitan society. Here, too, was the principal mart, where the planters shipped their tobacco for the English market, and received from home those articles of manufacture and those rarer delicacies which the colony was as yet unable to supply. And here, too, they received news from Europe, which served the old planters and prurient young statesmen with topics of conversation until the next arrival; while the young folks gazed with wonder and delight at the ship, its crew and passengers, who had actually been in that great old England of which they had heard their fathers talk so much. The town, like an old-fashioned sermon, was naturally divided into two parts. The first, which lay along the river, was chiefly devoted to commercial purposes—the principal resort of drunken seamen, and those land harpies who prey upon them for their own subsistence. Here were located those miserable tippling-houses, which the Assembly had so long and so vainly attempted to suppress. Here were the busy forwarding houses, with their dark counting-rooms, their sallow clerks, and their bills of lading. Here the shrewd merchant and the bluff sea-captain talked loudly and learnedly of the laws of trade, the restrictive policy of the navigation laws, and the growing importance of the commercial interests of the colony. And here was the immense warehouse, under the especial control of the government, with its hundreds of hogsheads of tobacco, all waiting patiently their turn for inspection; and the sweating negroes, tearing off the staves of the hogsheads to display the leaf to view, and then noisily hammering them together again, while the impatient inspector himself went the rounds and examined the wide spread plant, and adjudged its quality; proving at the same time his capacity as a connoisseur, by the enormous quid which he rolled pleasantly in his mouth.