Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/82

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castle, upon the bustling town below. In the view from Belvidere, we are told,


"the town,—the Point, the shipping in the Basin and at Fell's Point, the bay as far as the eye can reach, rising ground on the right and left of the harbor,—a grove of trees on the declivity on the right, a stream of water [Jones's Falls] breaking over the rocks at the foot of the hill on the left, all conspire to complete the beauty and the grandeur of the prospect."


Here, as at many of the country-seats near Baltimore, a lavish hospitality brought strangers from America and from Europe into pleasant association with the leading Marylanders of the day. A little to the south of Belvidere, in what was then the woodland of "Howard's Park," there soon rose the grandly simple column of the Washington Monument.

If Maryland escaped actual invasion during the Revolutionary War, she bore the brunt of the second contest with England. After the British had sailed up the Patuxent, laying waste the manor-houses and wide plantations along its banks, after they had burned the national Capitol and routed a body of American militia, they proceeded to attack Baltimore by land and sea. The story is told that some faint hearts came forward with a propo-