a Nuremberg Snake out of its toy box, as far as Congress Hall, with its line of low-browed, hip-roofed wooden houses, in a disorderly array, standing forward and back, after the manner of a regiment of militia, with many an interval between the files. Some of these structures were painted blue and white, and some yellow; and here and there sprang up a more magnificent mansion of brick, with windows like a multiplication table and great wastes of wall between the stories, with occasional court-yards before them; and reverential locust-trees, under whose shade bevies of truant schoolboys, ragged little negroes and grotesque chimney-sweeps 'skied coppers' and disported themselves at marbles.
"In the days I speak of, Baltimore was fast emerging from the village state into a thriving commercial town. Lots were not yet sold by the foot,—except perhaps in the denser marts of business,—rather by the acre. It was in the rus-in-urbe category. That fury for levelling had not yet possessed the souls of City Councils. We had our seven hills then, which have been rounded off since, and that locality which is now described as lying between the two parallels of North Charles Street and Calvert Street presented a steep and barren hill-side, broken by rugged cliffs and deep ravines, washed out by the storms of winter into chasms which were threaded by paths of toilsome and difficult ascent. On the summit of one of these cliffs stood the old church of St. Paul's [the second], some fifty paces or more to the eastward of the present church [the third], and surrounded by a brick wall that bounded on the present lines of Charles and Lexington Streets. This old building, ample and stately, looked abroad over half the
