of age and the scars of Civil War, the restored Pohick is still 
the religious center of the community. 
Turning sharply to the east at Pohick Church, a drive of six 
miles brings one to the entrance to Gunston Hall. The driveway 
curves through a native forest, then passes between open fields 
and along the poplar-lined avenue to the circular driveway lead- 
ing to the Hall. 
In the eighteenth century George Mason's estate, consisting 
of five or six thousand acres, formed a community of some five 
hundred people, including not only farm laborers but also 
artisans of all kinds, who raised or manufactured nearly every 
necessity of life. The house itself is of brick, made on the 
premises, laid in Flemish bond, with quoins of stone. From a 
porch which preserves the grace and beauty of Georgian archi- 
tecture, one enters a wide hall extending through the house, as 
was usual in Virginia houses of its class. The first room on the 
right, spacious in extent, is finished with white woodwork 
delicately carved in Chinese-Chippendale fashion. The second 
and communicating room has still more elaborately carved wood- 
work, worked out with pilasters, and with broken pediments 
above the doors, the mantel and the closet-alcoves. Here the 
mellow color of the pine walls, once covered with silken hang- 
ings, gives unusual beauty and dignity to the apartment. 
The first room to the left of the central hall was George 
Mason's study, where, often confined by his inveterate enemy, 
gout, he thought out and wrote out those documents which rank 
him among the founders of governments. A large photographic 
copy of the Bill of Rights forms the over-mantel, thus linking up 
the place and the man. The fourth room, now used as the dining- 
room, looks out upon the gardens, the river and the distant Mary- 
land hills. A stairway protected by a mahogany trimmed 
baluster delightful in design and delicately carved, leads to the 
chambers. The characteristic ornament of Gunston Hall, found 
on gateways, without, over the stairway and on pediments with- 
in, is the pomegranate, symbol of hospitality, a quality now as 
ever the outstanding feature of the place. 
Passing out to a second portico akin to the front one in its 
satisfactory lines, one looks between two solid rows of Box, twice 
the height of a tall man, to see at the vista's end the blue waters 
of the Potomac. Flanking the centuries-old Box hedges are 
gardens lined with pleached avenues of fruit trees reaching to 
the crest of a high hill terraced with formal gardens. The view 
over these gardens commands stretches of meadows so delight- 
fully interspersed and bordered with forest trees that nature 
seems to vie with art ! The Potomac, with its steam and sail 
traffic, becomes the broad highway leading out into the world, 
as indeed it was to the Virginia planters. Indeed, one has small 
difficulty in conjuring up in imagination "Washington's eight- 
15 
