chap. VI.} 1754. |
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gathered in numbers in the valleys of its lovely
mountain ranges, where the productive red soil bore wheat luxuriantly, and gave to fruits the most delicate flavor.
In the pleasant region of Orange County, among its half-opened forests, in a home of plenty,1 there sported already on the lawn the child, Madison, round whose gentle nature clustered the hopes of American union.
Deeper in the wilderness, on the Highlands of Albemarle, Thomas Jefferson, son of a surveyor, of whose ancestral descent memory preserved but one generation, dwelt on the skirt of forest life, and from boyhood gazed on the loveliest of scenes, with no intercepting ridge between his dwelling-place and the far distant ocean; a diligent student of the languages of Greece and Rome, and of France, treading the mountain-side with elastic step in pursuit of game.
Beyond the Blue Ridge men came southward from the glades of Pennsylvania; of most various nations, Irish, Scottish, and German; ever in strife with the royal officers; occupying lands without allotment, or on mere warrants of survey, without patents or payment of quitrents; baffling to the last the settled policy of England.
Everywhere in Virginia the sentiment of individuality was the parent of its republicanism.
Its dauntless mind, not dissenting from established forms, was impatient of restraint, and submitted only to self-direction.
1 The illustrious Madison detailed to me incidents in his career from his boyhood to his old age. He was sent to school in King and Queen's County to Donald Robertson, a good scholar, an emigrant from the Highlands of Scotland, suspected of having joined in the rebellion of 1745, and of being a Roman Catholic. Madison, when at school, had a pony, and the whole charge for keeping the boy and his horse was eight pounds, Virginia currency, for the year; for tuition, forty shillings a year, In the former generation. Madison's father went to school to Chancellor Pendleton's elder brother, a good teacher, and the whole cost of board and instruction was five pounds per annum.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1859.
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