of the Southern Colony of Virginia_, which contains a graphic narrative
of the fever and famine summer of 1607 at Jamestown. But many of these
gentlemen were idlers, "unruly gallants, packed thither by their
friends to escape ill destinies," dissipated younger sons, soldiers of
fortune, who came over after the gold which was supposed to abound in
the new country, and who spent their time in playing bowls and drinking
at the tavern as soon as there was any tavern. With these was a
sprinkling of mechanics and farmers, indented servants, and the
on-scourings of the London streets, fruit of press-gangs and jail
deliveries, sent over to "work in the plantations."

Nor were the conditions of life afterward in Virginia very favorable to
literary growth. The planters lived isolated on great estates which
had water-fronts on the rivers that flow into the Chesapeake. There
the tobacco, the chief staple of the country, was loaded directly upon
the trading vessels that tied up to the long, narrow wharves of the
plantations. Surrounded by his slaves, and visited occasionally by a
distant neighbor, the Virginia country gentleman lived a free and
careless life. He was fond of fox-hunting, horse-racing, and
cock-fighting. There were no large towns, and the planters met each
other mainly on occasion of a county court or the assembling of the
Burgesses. The court-house was the nucleus of social and political
life in Virginia as the town-meeting was in New England. In such a
state of society schools were necessarily few, and popular education
did not exist. Sir William Berkeley, who was the royal governor of the
colony from 1641 to 1677, said, in 1670, "I thank God there are no free
schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred
years." In the matter of printing this pious wish was well-nigh
realized. The first press set up in the colony, about 1681, was soon
suppressed, and found no successor until the year 1729. From that date