(the work of the early colonists), and, beyond,
into the cotton plantations and "lovely farmsteads."

I am not either, to forget the great avenue
from Charleston into the country, which is lined
with live oaks and huge flowering magnolias,
with tree myrtles, jessamines, and gardens of
flowers.

I am not vexed or chafed by seeing Venatico's
eyes kindle and his chest heave, as he relates
the repulse of Sir Peter Parker and the
slaughter of Clinton's men. For I sympathise
with the Americans in that unjust war. Though
I lament the blood my country then uselessly
shed, I cannot but rejoice that an oppressed
colony became free, and, by the freedom that it
won, proved the right to freedom.

Now we leave the seaward-looking houses,
with the external green blinds to every window,
and the trim gardens, so crowded of afternoons,
and follow Venatico into the pleasant but narrow
streets of Charleston. Being of an historical
and antiquarian turn of mind, he explains to
me that in one respect his dear city is much
inferior to other Southern cities. It has few
squares; there is one, I think, with a monument
(as at Savannah), the reason of which
defect— for " such defect cometh by cause"
— is that the city was originally (in 1670) laid out
according to the plan furnished to the young
colonists from England.

The plan was a magnificent plan, doubtless,
according to the lights of Charles the Second's
architects (Wren could have had no hand in it,
for he had grand Babylonian rectangular views
on such matters), but now, in the full common
sense daylight of our modern time, the streets,
though regular, look narrow, and the result is
unsatisfactory.

But Charleston, in many ways, improves constantly.
Repeated scourges of fire have taught
the citizens not to rear houses of frail burnable
plank, however cheap it may be; and they now
use good honest brick, as the Baltimore people
do. Then the city is being loosely built; I mean
with plenty of room for ventilation between the
houses; and with large gardens.

These gardens, and the huge verandahs, like
vast half-open external rooms, form the special
characteristic features of Charleston. When I
look up the great street in which Mill's Hotel
is situated, I look up a street of gardens and
detached houses. The verandahs are of enormous
size, and hang on to the walls by all sorts
of contrivances: now from the first floor, now
from the second, now resembling huge open-air
conservatories, now real apartments, without
any walls but trellised railings.

But Venatico has a special object in guiding
me by quiet by-streets of gardens towards
the famous St. Michael's tower, famous in
Charleston tradition. I have been expressing
to him my astonishment and delight at seeing
the real classic laurel growing wild in the
pine-woods of Georgia, spreading green and
immortal as when Apollo first plucked its leaves
for a wreath in the forests round Parnassus.
Venatico smiles at my enthusiasm, and with the
true relying unselfish courtesy of a true American
gentleman, offers to show me a peculiar
species of flowering laurel, that grows to great
perfection in Charleston, and in Charleston and
its district only.

Through some streets (as of an English country
town), all silent and grave, and wearing a rather
stern aristocratic aspect, and we reached the
house we were in search of. There was the tree
some thirty feet high, with green evergreen
leaves, a profusion of flowers, and a pulpy red
blood drop of a berry, with which it had besprinkled
the road. Still it was not what we
English call the laurel; and, indeed, for flowers
and trees, as well as for beasts and birds, the
Americans have quite a different nomenclature.
The tree was not half as beautiful either, as the
huge magnolia trees I had seen growing round
New Orleans, where their vast bushes of pink
flowers shine out like colossal roses in the twilight;
but still its very existence seemed to
realise to me at once the far southern country I
was in, more than all else I had seen; and even
still more did I feel this in one of the more busy
streets when I suddenly came to a tropical-
looking palmetto-tree growing through a square
orifice in the pavement just opposite a hardware
shop. The dead saplings covered with
sheets of tin-tacks (where tiles have been fastened)
I had been accustomed to, even in the
Broadway of New York: where, indeed, there
is a legend that one last stump still exists; but
a palm in an European city— yea, in the very
streets— was a novelty.

Yet there it stood, grazed by cart-wheels and
dusty with environing traffic, a palm-tree of
the tropics; its trunk sheathed, fold on fold, and
its fan-like leaves, as I had seen them, mere
bushes, in the swamps round Lake Pontchartrain.
"How can we expect to find cold,
phlegmatic, staid, calculating, dollar-loving
people," thought I, " in a burning region
where the palmetto grows in the streets, and
where folks eat green peppers at dinner?"

But I have no room to describe all the
Charleston sights that Venatico took me to
see. I particularly rejoiced, however, in the old
houses, for it is not in many parts of America you
can see houses old enough to boast of ghosts or
legends. There is the St. Michael's Church, with
the much-admired tower aforesaid; the old
Custom-house, where the patriots were imprisoned
— a place with really a gloomy dignity
above it; and the State House, now employed
for the courts of justice, a massy building.
The new Custom-house is all of marble, and,
though monotonous, is not without beauty; as
for the churches, they are all creditable— two
of them, St. Finsbar (who knows anything of
this saint's antecedents?), a Catholic church,
boasts a tower like that of St. Philip's (Episcopalian),
and there is a Baptist church with
a spire more than two hundred feet high. This
is the country where all creeds meet.

The Charleston people, Venatico told me,
in the days we spent together visiting these