This is a book of Travels in Virginia during a period that may be called revolutionary, from the year 1769 to the year 1802, when the United States lay still to the east of France and Spain, and the limit of Virginia to the west was the river Ohio: it was a proud commonwealth, and with reason, territorially, in the character of its ruling people, and in that inexplicable inheritance which has made Virginia significant. It is interesting to observe, among these travelers, how carefully the best informed of them estimate the strength of Virginia, whether justly or not regarded at home and here and there abroad as the most influential of the new states. Those were extraordinary years in the making of America, the fund of the capital of the country, as it were, accumulating to the point of application in surprising ways. It is well to look back, through foreign eyes, and see a little of what the situation was like at that time in the State of the first dynasty.