for the poor and middle classes, was a languishing affair, but the sons of the well-to-do planters and merchants often studied abroad. Under these conditions, of course, literature was not early developed, though from the aristocracy came alert leaders in state-craft and oratory-the intellectual avocations most likely to succeed in such a community. Georgia, at the present time the most promising Southern State, was settled late, by the intrepid Oglethorpe, with earnest Englishmen in his company. The famous Wesleys, Charles and John, worked in Georgia for a time, to the injury of the colony, on the whole; George Whitefield also labored there, at least doing

Georgia.

no harm; and the ever-zealous Moravians and the faithful Friends came in small numbers. Philanthropy was in vogue; the very aim of the founders was to provide for the poor, especially the debtor class, and for orphans and the friendless. An attempt was even made, though unsuccessfully, to prohibit slavery and keep out rum. The depraved classes were naturally numerous, for a time, and attempts to foster particular industries were injurious; but after thirty or forty years the natural wealth of the region, and the closer management of affairs by the government of Great Britain, brought about a steady and hopeful development, which gave scope to the admirable aims of many of the settlers. Education, however, was belated, and literature nonexistent for many years.

The dominant influence in the Southern colonies was that of Virginia. We have seen that the seeds

of Northern development were sown on the shores of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay; and a cor

Virginia.

responding importance, for the other great section of the United States, is to be assigned to the commencement of Virginian civilization between the York and James rivers. The settlers at Jamestown in 1607, the beginners of the new nation, were of pure English stock, and in all race-characteristics were at one with the builders of Plymouth, Boston, and Salem. But between the two bodies there were important marks of difference. The first Virginian colonists represented the Church of England, not the Independents and Puritans. While laborers were included in their number, the greater portion consisted of men of aristocratic family. Adventure and enrichment in the New World were the leading objects, rather than religious freedom, of which the Anglicans, of course, had no lack at home. Some of the colonists were willing to work, but unable to do so, effectively, because of their unfamiliarity with manual labor. Toilers with the hand were less numerous than in Massachusetts,-though not a few of the Puritans and the Pilgrims were men of high education. This lack crippled Virginia's progress for many years, and it was not made good by the development of slavery. The presence of a planter class, unused to physical toil, accounts for many of the failures--as well as for some of the successes-of Virginia and the South for two centuries and a half. And at the first-save for Bartholomew Gosnold and John Smith-there was a lack even of that competent leadership which so favored the progress of the

Northern settlements. Among the colonists of every grade there was also for some time a lack of homes; for, as in the California immigration of 1849, the goldseekers and adventurers did not bring their families with them. These circumstances account, in large measure, for the more solid prosperity of New England, as compared with Virginia, in the first half of the seventeenth century.

By 1650, however, the commonwealth of Virginia had begun to rise to the commanding position it so long retained in the American society. Towns were almost wholly lacking, but in the homes of the planters were comfort and the influences of manorial centres. Education was cared for, at least in the higher circles, though the absence of villages forbade the existence of many schools. As early as 1619 a college had been arranged for, and in 1693 the establishment of William and Mary College at Williamsburg gave the colony an educational centre at the capital and political head-quarters. Religion was protected by the local government, which supported the Episcopal clergy by taxation. Intolerance and persecution, not unmixed with superstition, disgraced the colony for a time, and even printing was suppressed; but these evils gradually faded away, and different religious denominations, and the Williamsburg printing-press, were given a fairer chance. The Established Church was, it is true, affected for many years by the evil influences which so far removed the Church of England in the eighteenth century from the spirit of early Christianity; but among the Virginia Episcopal clergy were many men of zeal,

learning, and integrity, and the sober and virtuous temper, though not the average learning, of the Dissenters was quite equal to that of the Episcopalians. Trade was subordinate to agriculture, and under the latter head tobacco was the all-important item. The rich soil promoted wealth, and also tempted to habits of extravagance. Slaves abounded; above them was the "poor white" class, partly recruited by convict transportation; then came the middle class of worthy farmers, including Scotch-Irish Presbyterians and some Germans; while at the top were the comparatively rich and intelligent, though sometimes idle and dissipated, representatives of the Cavaliers. Foreign elements were small in percentage, and Virginia was an English colony, working under many disadvantages of class-relations, in favorable climatic conditions.

The best Virginians-the leading section of the population—were manly men, Englishmen through and through, lovers of liberty and order, broad in thought and generous in act. They were inferior to the Puritans in intensity of conviction, but superior to them in catholic temper. Their education was often mediocre, but they were men of the world and of affairs, accustomed and able to rule. They visited England, where some of them studied, and they brought back something of London life and characteristics, as well as the standard English books of the day. Williamsburg, small and unimpressive as it was, boasted of cavalier graces unknown in the North. From the Virginia aristocracy, whatever its faults, and because of the manorial system whose

leaders were accustomed to rule, sprang the great Virginians who were so prominent in the Revolution, and who made the State the "mother of presidents." In brief, as Massachusetts showed the world how potent could be English village life in a new land, so Virginia displayed the workings of the squirearchy. The town-meeting was the starting-point of Northern civilization; the planter's mansion of Southern.

At the time of the Declaration of Independence, the new nation-if such it could be called-stretched from Maine to Georgia on the Atlantic seaboard. Florida was Spanish, and Louisiana, the The West. great region west of the Mississippi, was also under actual Spanish ownership, though largely French in population and social characteristics. The sparsely settled "Northwest Territory" included the present States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan, with a part of Minnesota. By purchase or conquest the United States has covered all these, and stretched westward to the Pacific Ocean, until its marine line on that ocean is almost opposite the original one on the Atlantic. Both Northern and Southern colonists steadily marched westward, carrying with them their characteristics of race, society, and religion. "Unto him that hath shall be given"; the Northern emigrants to the West were more numerous than the Southern; the configuration of the continent gave them more land to occupy; and a newer New England gradually appeared in Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, California, and elsewhere. Southern traits were similarly transferred to Alabama and Missis