The mansion having a main building 5«ixty by forty feet, with wide halls, spacious
apartments and ample wings united by corridors was most substantially constructed of
the best materials, and doubtless its builders imagined their structure would endure
for centuries, and it is only because of great neglect and severe usage that its condition
now only ninty-five years after the laying of its corner stone is so dilapidated, with its
leaky roofs, its loosened casements and unhinged shutters and blinds, its broken win-
dows and the bricks and stones falling away from its massive walls.
Only the irreverent and unpatriotic pilgrim who treads these lonely halls

**Whose guests have fled,
Whose liijhts are dead."

can note the melancholy change without a pang of grief and regret that there are no
reverent hands to restore the wastes and to set once more in order the stately house
as it was when its first mistress held there her sway. No other of all the historic
shrines of Virginia, next to Mount Vernon, appeals so forcibly to our kind regard.
The manor was a portion of the Mount Vernon estate. The mansion was erected as
we have seen by the loving munificence of the first President and his wife. Its mis-
tress grew up and was educated under his affectionate care and solicitude. Its master
was his nephew and had won honors as a gallant soldier of the revolution, serving on
the staff of General Morgan the true hefo of Quebec, Saratoga and Cowpens.
