ing the group to a favorite paper from the Spectator. The morning scene, too, with the mother and her servants, we can infer with much probability from descriptions of similar interiors preserved from that period.

Deeply as Jefferson came to hate slavery, clearly as he foretold the ruin enclosed in the system, he saw it only in its better aspects at his own home. He saw his father patiently drilling negroes, not long from their native Africa, into carpenters, millers, wheelrights, shoemakers, and farmers. He saw his mother of a morning in her sitting-room, which was well furnished with contrivances for facilitating labor, seated with her daughters and her servants, like Andromache surrounded by her maidens, all busy with household tasks. We possess authority for the picture. Have we not been favored with a glimpse of Mrs. Washington's morning-room at Mount Verthat room which was so 66 non, nicely fixed for all sorts of work"? "On one side sits the chambermaid with her knitting; on the other, a little colored pet, learning to sew. An old, decent woman was there with her table and shears, cutting out the negroes' winter clothes, while the good old lady directs them all, incessantly knitting herself. She points out to me several pairs of nice colored stockings and gloves she had just finished, and presents me with a pair half done, which she begs I will finish and wear for her sake." Bishop Meade, who quotes this interesting passage from an old Virginia manuscript, adds that, in other houses (like the home of the Jeffersons) less opulent and containing many children, the mother would have her daughters, with her in the same apartment, one spinning, another basting, another winding yarn, another churning, all vigorously at work: for at that day a plantation was obliged to be nearly self-supplying; and the family at the great house had to do the thinking, contriving, cutting, and doctoring for a family of as many helpless, improvident children as there were slaves.

In such a busy, healthy home as this, with father, mother, two elder sisters, four younger sisters, and a little brother, Thomas Jefferson lived in his boyhood. He was happy in his eldest sister, Jane, whose mind was akin to his own. She was his confidant and companion, and shared his taste for the arts, particularly his early love of music. The family were all reared and baptized in the Church of England; and this sister greatly excelled in singing the few fine old psalm-tunes which then constituted the whole psalmody

of the Protestant world. For a century, it is said, there were but five tunes sung in the colonial churches. By the fireside in the winter evenings, and on the banks of their river in the soft, summer twilight, there were family singings, Jane Jefferson's melodious voice leading the choir; to which was added, as the years went on, the accompaniment of her brother's violin. There must have been much musical feeling in the family to have generated in this boy so profound a passion for music as he exhibited. He speaks of three early tastes as "the passion of his soul," -music, mathematics, and architecture; and of these the one first developed was music.

The massive instruments with which we are familiar - the piano and the organ - would have been unattainable in a Virginia farmhouse at that period, even if they had been sufficiently perfected, to warrant transportation so far. The violin, called by its old-fashioned name of the fiddle, king of instruments, was almost the only one generally known in the back countries of the colonies. In Virginia, when Jefferson and Patrick Henry were merry lads together, both of whom played the fiddle, it appears that almost every farmhouse which had a boy in it could boast a fiddle also. Mr. Rives, in his "Life of Madison," among many other precious things, preserves the programme of the rustic festivities arranged for St. Andrew's Day in 1737, in the next county but one to Jefferson's, Albemarle. It throws light on his early violin, besides showing how English the tone of Virginia was at that period.

First, twenty horses were to run round a three-mile course for a prize of five pounds, no one "to put up a horse unless he had subscribed for the entertainment and paid half a pistole." Next, a hat of the value of twenty shillings was to be cudgelled for. Then, a violin was to be played for by twenty fiddlers, "no person to have the liberty of playing, unless he bring a fiddle with him." When the prize had been awarded, all the performers were to play together, each a different tune, and to be treated by the company. Next, twelve boys, twelve years of age, were to run a hundred and twelve yards for a hat worth twelve shillings. A "quire of ballads were to be sung for by a number of songsters, all of them to have liquor sufficient to clear their windpipes." A pair of silver buckles was to be wrestled for by "a number of brisk young men." "A pair of handsome shoes" was to be "danced for." A pair of handsome silk stockings of one pistole value was to be given to "the handsomest

young country maid that appears in the field." A "handsome entertainment" was also to be provided for the subscribers and their wives; "and such of them as are not so happy as to have wives may treat any other lady." Drums, trumpets, and hautboys were to play; and, at the feast, the healths of the king and of the governor were to be drunk. The programme concluded by notifying the public, that, "as this mirth is designed to be purely innocent and void of offence, all persons resorting to these are desired to behave themselves with decency and sobriety; the subscribers being resolved to discountenance all immorality with the utmost rigor."

The prominence assigned to the violin contest in these festivities explains the frequent allusions to it in the early memorials of Virginia, and lessens our surprise at Jefferson's statement, that, during twelve years of his early life, he practised on the violin three hours a day. The innocent instrument, it appears, had an ill name among the stricter religious people of the mountain counties, where “ evangelical" principles prevailed. Our zealous young amateur may have heard a sermon once preached in a parish church near his home by Rev. Charles Clay, cousin of the eloquent Kentuckian, - in which the preacher warned his hearers against the "profanation" of Christmas Day by "fiddling, dancing, drinking, and such like;" practices, he said, which were only too common in Albemarle. Then, as now, it was the drink that did the mischief, though the fiddle and the dance had to share the blame.

CHAPTER IV.

JEFFERSON'S SCHOOL-LIFE.

PETER JEFFERSON began early to execute his heartfelt intention of educating his son. This was not so difficult as has been represented. Twenty years before the child was born, the Bishop of London, in whose diocese Virginia was, addressed certain questions to the Virginian clergy. One of the questions was, "Are there any schools in your parish?" All the clergymen, except two or three, answered, "None;" and the two or three who did not make this answer could only claim that their parishes had "a charity school." Another question was, "Is there any parish library?" To this, all the clergy, except one man, answered, “None;" and that one man made this reply, "We have the Book of Homilies, the Whole Duty of Man, and the Singing Psalms." But, by the time Jefferson was old enough to go to school, there were a few schools in the more densely peopled counties of Virginia; and several of the more learned and decent of the clergy received pupils into their houses for instruction in Latin and Greek.

He was fortunate in his teachers, as in all things else. At five he went to a school where only the English language was employed; at nine his education seriously began, when he entered a Scottish clergyman's family as a boarding scholar, where he learned Latin, Greek, and French. Entries in Peter Jefferson's account-book, still existing, show that he paid the Rev. William Douglass sixteen pounds sterling a year for his son's board and tuition. This first instructor of Thomas Jefferson came over from Scotland as tutor in the family of Colonel Monroe, father of President Monroe, and settling on the James, near Peter Jefferson's tobacco plantation, spent a long life in teaching young and old. He was of what we now call the "evangelical" school, and regarded Dr. Doddridge's works as

more precious than gold, "the best legacy " he could leave his children. Peter Jefferson was a vestryman of his church. The boy was evidently much at home during the five years he spent at this school, always, probably, on Saturdays and Sundays; and his father took care that the boy did not neglect a child's first and chief duty, which is to grow. He also instructed him in arithmetic and the ridiments of mathematics, then generally neglected in classical schools. But this excellent father was not destined to experience the noblest triumph parents know, that of seeing his child a full-formed man, and better equipped for life's journey than himself had been at starting. His great strength did not avail to bring him to old age. In 1757, when he was but fifty years old, he died of a disease not recorded.

After Braddock's defeat, in 1755, there could have been little rest for such a colonel of a frontier county as he was; and, indeed, there are indications-pay-rolls and other military documents and entries among his existing papers, showing that he was active against the exulting foe. Nothing was heard of for a time on the borders but massacre and fire, and the flight of whole counties of settlers to the lower country. It is of this period, in the midst of which Colonel Jefferson died, that the youthful commander of the Virginian forces, Colonel Washington, wrote that despatch from the frontier which startles every reader of his letters by its burst of vehement pathos. "The supplicating tears of the women and moving petitions of the men," he wrote, "melt me with such deadly sorrow, that I solemnly declare, if I know my own mind, I could offer myself a willing sacrifice to the butchering enemy, provided that would contribute to the people's ease." The county colonels were all in arms during that time of terror. Colonel John Madison, in Orange, the next county to Albemarle, and nearer the scene, saw some of the horrors of the war from his own front door. His son James, four years old at the time of Braddock's defeat, always remembered the terror and desolation of the two next years. Exposure and fatigue may have rendered the colonel of Albemarle County liable to the attack of one of the summer diseases, for it was on the 17th of August that he died.

His death is spoken of as sudden; but this good father, it seems, had time and strength, sudden as his death may have been, to render his eldest son one last service. Dying, he left an injunction that his son's education should be completed, and enjoined those in