the demand is always sure, and the supply unfailing,” and lastly, the energetic spirit of the people. [Illustration: BELVIDERE, 1786, THE HOME OF COL. JOHN E. HOWARD.] During all this period the city improved in appearance as well as in size. Especially characteristic of the new Baltimore was “Belvidere,” the residence of Colonel John Eager Howard. Belvidere was completed in 1794, and only a few years ago was dismantled by the ruthless hand of the city surveyor, to make way for the progress of the ever-expanding city by the extension of North Calvert Street. From Belvidere, which at the beginning of the century was a half-mile from Baltimore, one could look down, as from some mediæval castle, upon the bustling town below. In the view from Belvidere, we are told, “the town,--the Point, the shipping in the Basin and at Fell’s Point, the bay as far as the eye can reach, rising ground on the right and left of the harbor,--a grove of trees on the declivity on the right, a stream of water [Jones’s Falls] breaking over the rocks at the foot of the hill on the left, all conspire to complete the beauty and the grandeur of the prospect.” Here, as at many of the country-seats near Baltimore, a lavish hospitality brought strangers from America and from Europe into pleasant association with the leading Marylanders of the day. A little to the south of Belvidere, in what was then the woodland of “Howard’s Park,” there soon rose the grandly simple column of the Washington Monument. If Maryland escaped actual invasion during the Revolutionary War, she bore the brunt of the second contest with England. After the British had sailed up the Patuxent, laying waste the manor houses and wide plantations along its banks, after they had burned the national Capitol and routed a body of American militia, they proceeded to attack Baltimore by land and sea. The story is told that some faint hearts came forward with a proposition to compound for the safety of the city with a heavy ransom, when Colonel Howard replied, “I have as much property at stake as most people, and I have four sons in the field; but sooner would I see my sons weltering in their blood, and my property reduced to ashes, than so far disgrace the country.” It was such spirit as this that checked the land attack at North Point, and that held out in Fort McHenry during the anxious night of September 12th. When day broke upon Fort McHenry, the flag was still there. And in the gray dawn, Francis Scott Key, detained upon the _Minden_ in an effort to secure the release of a captive friend, wrote upon the back of a letter the thoughts which were passing through his mind. Printed a little later, and first sung in a restaurant near the Holliday Street Theatre, the song of _The Star Spangled Banner_ was caught up in intense enthusiasm, till now, following the flag it celebrates, it is sung in every portion of the globe.