At the foot of Duke-of-Gloucester Street, in 1760, John Ridout built for himself and his children three houses that are like a castle; and just across, hidden by the beautiful St. Mary’s Church, lies Carrollton, the home of Charles Carroll.[4] It is occupied now by the Redemptorist priests, and the profane shoe of a woman can gain for its owner no nearer view than that to be had from the bridge that spans the waterway below. It looks a very charming place, built in the Dutch rather than the Georgian taste: gray, small windows, high-roofed, and set in a garden which is what all Annapolis gardens are, and what all gardens everywhere ought to be, an ordered wilderness of hollies, box, magnolias, roses, lilacs, more roses and yet more lilacs, jessamine, wallflowers, iris, lilies, violets, daffodils,--all the old-fashioned flowers which ever were and ever will be the dearest and sweetest flowers in the world. [Illustration: THE BURNING OF THE “PEGGY STEWART.” FROM THE PAINTING BY FRANK B. MAYER.] It is hard to come back even to the first days of the century just closing. The defence made by the guns of Fort Severn, which kept Admiral Cockburn at bay, seem but recent history in the light of other years, nor can the stirring scenes of the Civil and Spanish wars claim even a glance. Filled with the spirit of the golden days of the Athens of America, we sit in the deep window-seat of a panelled room, looking out across intervening lush and flowery growths, at the dome of the State House and at the aërial procession of the old denizens. What a procession it is! Indians, explorers, Lords Proprietary, Governors Royal, Republicans, Puritans, Cavaliers, priests, shipowners, sailors, slaves! Ships sail out with rich freights of tobacco and other Colonial produce, and ships sail in, bearing yet richer stores of silks and spices, wines and perfumes, silver and porcelain and sumptuous household furnishings. We see the growth in aristocracy, in wealth, in hospitality, in luxury, the plenty of those lavish boards, the splendor and courtliness of dress and manners of the gentry. Sedan chairs, carried by the liveried servants, attended by link boys and by bowing, perruqued gentlemen in gold-lace waistcoats and buckled shoes, bear the patched and powdered ladies to balls and routs. We hear the gossip of the playhouse--the first in America--or of the races. The _bon mots_ of the Tuesday Club are told again; the wit flashes at the dinner given in honor of the King’s birthday; the defeat of the Pretender, the birth of the Dauphin, the repeal of the Stamp Act, the coming of Washington. Anything would “Serve as excuse for the glass” in those “Very merry, Dancing, drinking, Laughing, quaffing, and unthinking times.”