The facetious Colonel William Byrd of Westover visited Edenton in 1728, and tells us that its forty or fifty houses were mostly small and poor, and that only the better sort had brick chimneys. He says that the Court-House looked like a tobacco barn, and that it was, as he supposed, the only “metropolis” in the world which had no house of worship of any kind, and no religious teacher or minister. This may have been true as to the corporate limits of the town, but we know that a church had been built at “Queen Anne’s Creek,” the former name of the point where Edenton stands, twenty-five years earlier; and a few years after Colonel Byrd’s visit the church still standing was begun, and after many years was completed in such fashion that to-day St. Paul’s Church, Edenton, remains the most admirable example we have of our Colonial architecture, and a stately and becoming temple of Christian worship. About the same time the present Court-House was also built. It fronts upon an open square, sloping gently down to the margin of the bay, so that the judge, sitting on the bench and looking through the front windows, enjoys a beautiful view of the waters across the sound towards Plymouth. This has not always been conducive to the despatch of business. A very able and learned judge from the up-country, upon his first holding court in Edenton, is said to have stopped the eloquent counsel in the midst of his speech, and to have declared that it would be impossible for him to attend to his argument until it could be explained to him how two vessels, which he saw out in the bay, could be sailing in exactly opposite directions on the same wind. [Illustration: ST. PAUL’S CHURCH, EDENTON, N. C., FROM THE SOUTHEAST. BEGUN IN 1736.]