II.
EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT
The old legendary guest of the Province House abode in
my remembrance from midsummer till January. One idle
evening last winter, confident that he would be found in
the snuggest corner of the bar-room, I resolved to pay him
another visit, hoping to deserve well of my country by snatching
from oblivion some else unheard-of fact of history. The night
was chill and raw, and rendered boisterous by almost a gale of
wind, which whistled along Washington Street, causing the gas-*lights
to flare and flicker within the lamps. As I hurried
onward, my fancy was busy with a comparison between the
present aspect of the street, and that which it probably wore
when the British governors inhabited the mansion whither I
was now going. Brick edifices in those times were few, till
a succession of destructive fires had swept, and swept again,
the wooden dwellings and warehouses from the most populous
quarters of the town. The buildings stood insulated and independent,
not, as now, merging their separate existences into
connected ranges, with a front of tiresome identity, but each
possessing features of its own, as if the owner's individual taste
had shaped it, and the whole presenting a picturesque irregularity,
the absence of which is hardly compensated by any
beauties of our modern architecture. Such a scene, dimly
vanishing from the eye by the ray of here and there a tallow