whose charge he was to be, not to permit him to neglect the exercises requisite for his body's development. This strong man valued strength. He used to say that the weakly in body could not be independent in mind; and, therefore, among his dying thoughts was solicitude for his son's healthy, unchecked growth. He died leaving his wife still young, not quite forty; one daughter seventeen; another sixteen; his son Thomas fourteen; another daughter thirteen; another eleven; another five; and a boy and girl, twins, aged twenty-two months. To the end of his days, Jefferson spoke of his father, thus early lost, with pride and veneration; and he especially loved to think that his dying command was that his son's mind should not be wronged of its due culture and nourishment. He used to say, that, if he had to choose between the education or the estate his father gave him, he would choose the education.

His father's death left him his own master; for he says in one of his later letters, that, "at fourteen years of age the whole care and direction of myself was thrown on myself entirely, without a relation or friend qualified to advise or guide me." The first use he made of his liberty was to change his school.

Fourteen miles away was the parsonage of Rev. James Maury, a man of great note in his time, and noted for many things; from whose twelve children have descended a great number of estimable persons of the name still living. Of Huguenot descent and gen. uine scholarship, he was free both from the vices and the bigotry which the refuse of the young English clergy often brought with them to Virginia in the early time. Pamphlets of his remain, maintaining the right and liberal side of questions bitterly contested in his day. He was one of the clergymen of the Established Church in Virginia who opposed, with voice and pen, that senseless persecution of Dissenters, which at last brought the Church itself to ruin. He went so far as to say, in a printed address, that he should feel it an "honor and happiness" to promote the spiritual good of "any one honest and well-disposed person of whatever persuasion;" and, though he preferred his own church, he thought he saw errors in it, as well as in the other sects, and should be glad to assist in the correction and improvement of both!

The coming of this clergyman into the mountain region, about the time of Jefferson's birth, was evidently a welcome event; for a glebe of four hundred acres was at once set off for him, and so spa

cious a parsonage was built, that he was able to add to his own large family some pupils from the adjacent counties. By the time Jefferson was fourteen, an important school had grown up about him,— the best, it is thought, then existing in the Province; and it continued to flourish, under one of Mr. Maury's sons, as late as the year 1808, when one of its pupils was President of a nation which the founder of the school did not live to see established.

We do not know what Jefferson read in Latin and Greek during the two years that he remained at Mr. Maury's school; but we know that he learned nothing but Latin and Greek. A classmate and an associate of his at this school was the second son of the master, also named James; to whom Mr. Jefferson, when Secretary of State under President Washington, gave the Liverpool consulship, which he held for forty-five years. The consul, on his return to Virginia in old age, used to say that Jefferson was noted at his father's school for scholarship, industry, and shyness. If a holiday was desired, it was not he who could be induced to ask it, though he urged others to ask; and, if the request was granted, he would, first of all, withdraw from the noisy crowd of his school fellows, learn next day's lesson, and then, rejoining them, begin the day's pleasure. Their favorite diversion was hunting on a mountain near by, which then and long after abounded in deer, turkeys, foxes, and other game. He was a keen hunter, as eager after a fox as Washington himself, swift of foot and sound of wind, coming in fresh and alert after a long day's clambering hunt.

After two years' stay at this school, he began, like other students, to be impatient to enter college. He had never yet seen a town, nor even a village of twenty houses, for there was none such within his range; and he doubtless had the curiosity of youth to behold the glories of the capital. He found plenty of reasons for gratifying his wish, some of which he laid before his guardian. He lost a fourth of his time, he said, by company coming to Shadwell and detaining him from school, which added very much to the expenses of the estate in housekeeping. At the college, too, he could learn "something of mathematics," as well as the languages, and "could get a more universal acquaintance, which may hereafter be serviceable to me." His guardian consenting, he bade farewell to his mother and sisters, and set off, early in the spring of 1760, for Williamsburgh, five days' long ride from his home.

CHAPTER V.

HE GOES TO COLLEGE.

Ir was not the custom of this young gentleman, nor of Virginians generally then, to perform their journeys with straightforward rapidity. They took friends' houses on the way, were easily persuaded to remain over Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and made the most of the opportunity. Such was eminently the habit of young Jefferson, related as he was to half the families of the Province, and seldom going far from home without his fiddle, and perhaps a roll of "new minuets" from London, so welcome to young ladies in the remoter counties. It was always impressed on his memory, that he began this interesting journey before Christmas, and staid over for the holidays at a merry house in Hanover County, where he met, for the first time, a jovial blade named Patrick Henry, only noted then for fiddling, dancing, mimicry, and practical jokes. He was mistaken, however. An existing letter of the time shows that he had not thought of going to college till after Christmas, and did not consult his guardian on the subject till January was half gone. He probably spent the holidays with Patrick Henry, returned home, and then entered upon the project of going to college. But it was always his custom, in his journeys to and from Williamsburg, to make long visits to friends on and near the road; and it was this, perhaps, that led to the error. He remembered the future orator merely as the prime mover of all the fun of the younger circle, and had not a suspicion of the wonderful talent that lay undeveloped within him. As little, doubtless, did Patrick Henry see in this slender, sandy-haired lad a political leader and associate, the pen of a Revolution of which himself was to be the tongue.

On reaching Williamsburg, we may be sure he did not see that metropolis with our disparaging eyes. In the old letters and me

moirs we read delusive accounts of its splendors and gayeties, — of the "viceregal court," "vying in elegance with that of St. James;" of the grand equipages of "the gentry;" and of all the pomp and circumstance of old Virginia, gathered there in the winter. It was "the centre of taste, fashion, and refinement," we are told; and the entertainments given at "the palace" were a blending of refinement and sumptuosity "worthy of the representative of royalty." Such statements do not prepare the cold investigator to discover that the capital of Virginia was an unpaved village of a thousand inhabitants, surrounded by an expanse of dark-green tobacco-fields as far as the eye could reach. Andrew Burnaby, an English clergyman who visited it eight months before the arrival of our student, estimates the number of its houses at "about two hundred," and its population at one thousand souls, whites and negroes." He mentions, also, that "there are ten or twelve gentlemen's families constantly residing in it, besides merchants and tradesmen." But he adds that in the winter, when the legislature and the great court of the colony were in session, the place was "crowded with the gentry of the country," and then there were balls and gayeties; but, as soon as business is over, the gentry return to their plantations, and "the town is in a manner deserted."

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Williamsburg, insignificant as it may seem to us, furnished the pattern for the city of Washington. It consisted chiefly of one street, a hundred feet broad and three-quarters of a mile long, with the Capitol at one end, the college at the other, and a ten-acre square with public buildings in the middle. It was well arranged to display whatever of equipage or costume the town could boast. As the great planters' families travelled in their own huge coaches, which at least had been gorgeous in the fashion of the age, coaches drawn of necessity by six horses, and as the dress of the period was bright with color and picturesque in style, we may well believe that this broad avenue presented, during the season, a striking and animated scene.

The public buildings, as they appeared to Jefferson's maturer judgment, were of a mongrel description, generally unpleasing and inharmonious. The Capitol, in which he was to witness such thrilling scenes, and take part in such important events, he thought "a light and airy structure," heavy and dull as it looks in the old pictures; and the governor's palace, though not handsome without,

was large and commodious, and surrounded by agreeable grounds; but the college and the hospital he condemns utterly. They were "rude, misshapen piles, which, but that they have roofs, would be taken for brick-kilns." This, however, was the remark of a connoisseur in architecture. The main edifice of the college resembled those brick barracks of Yale and Harvard, built in the same period : two stories high, with a steep roof and a row of windows in it, and a small belfry on its summit; quite good enough for young gentlemen who kept dogs and guns in their rooms, and considered it the chief end of students to frustrate the object for which they were sent to the institution. This building, with two solid-looking professors' houses near it, all standing in a square of four acres, marked with wellworn paths, and not wanting in large trees, presented upon the whole a respectable appearance. The arriving student probably did not think it so despicable as the author of the "Notes on Virginia." The private houses of Williamsburg, according to Mr. Burnaby, were "of wood, covered with shingles, and but indifferently built." The site of the town, however, was agreeable, an elevated plateau, midway between the York and the James, six miles from both. Those breezes which swept across the peninsula, and raised the clouds of dust in Williamsburg streets that annoyed the English traveller, tempered the burning heat of the summer, and, as he records, kept the town free from mosquitoes.

Such was Williamsburg in 1760, the chief residence of Jefferson for the next seven years, the most important period of his life; for it was then that he acquired his knowledge and his opinions. Whatever Williamsburg may have been to others, it was to him a true university; because, coming into familiar contact there with a few universal minds, he was capable of being instructed by them. He brought with him to college the three prime requisites of the successful student, perfect health, good habits, and an inquisitive intellect. He had come from a pure and honest home, where he had learned nothing but what was good and honorable; and he had come in good faith, to fulfil his father's fond intention of making him a scholar.

It was an ill-starred institution, this College of William and Mary. It had existed sixty-eight years, having been founded in 1692 by the sovereigns whose names it bore. They gave it an endowment, as an old historian records, of "nineteen hundred and eighty-five