Ir is now more than one hundred and forty-four years since the ancient capital of Maryland was shorn of its honors, by the removal of the public o?ices, and, along with them, the public functionaries, to Annapolis. The date of this removal, I think, is recorded as of the year of grace sixteen hundred and ninety four. The port of St. Mary's, up to that epoch, from the first settlement of the province, comprehending rather more than three score years, had been the seat of the Lord Proprietary's govern ment. This little city had grown up in hard-favored times, which had their due effect in leaving upon it the visible tokens of a stunted vegetation: it waxed gnarled and crooked, as it perked itself upward through the thorny troubles of its existence, and might be likened to the black jack, which yet retains a foothold in this region,-a scrubby, tough and hardy mignon of the forest, whose elder day of crabbed luxuriance affords a sour comment' upon the nurture of its youth.
