Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/99

 of government was removed from the original seat, St. Mary's, to the place which, after bearing three or four names, finally settled upon that of Annapolis, a mongrel title, assumed in honor of the then heiress to the Crown.

There is but one rational way of beginning a sketch of the old town, and that is to look first, as did the wise-hearted early Annapolitans, at the Church, the State House, and the School, and to picture them as they stand on smooth green lawns, high on the little peninsula, almost encircled by the silver marriage-ring of the Severn and its estuaries.

The Church (for although the praise of God arises from many altars, the interest naturally centres in the eldest born) is a long, low structure, giving an odd impression of some seaworthy craft cast adrift upon the green tideless sea of its spacious Circle. It was named, we fancy, for various Annes: the mother of the Virgin, the Lady Anne Arundel, and the Queen-to-be. St. Anne's it has ever been, bearing the name through three baptisms of fire, in one of which, it is said, the bell, Queen Anne's own gift, rung its own knell in a most weird and pathetic manner. Once upon a time its yard was the village burying-ground,