which it was to follow. Among these latter Thomas Jefferson was the foremost. His father was Peter Jefferson of “Shadwell," in Albemarle, and here Jefferson was born in April, 1743. At seventeen he was sent to William and Mary College; afterwards studied and began the practice of law; when he was about thirty married a young lady of Charles City with a beautiful face and a considerable estate; and following his bent entered ardently into politics. We have the portrait of him as a young man. He was tall, and his figure was "angular and far from beautiful," his face sunburnt, his eyes gray, and his hair sand-colored. His disposition was gay and mercurial, and he was an excellent performer on the violin; a squire of dames, and a participant in all the gayeties of the little Capital. Of this early period of his life his letters to John Page from Williamsburg, present a vivid picture. They give an account of his love mishaps with Miss Rebecca Burwell,1 a young lady of the Capital, whom he styles "Belinda," and are in vivid contrast with the popular idea of the gray politician and President. He was not, however, an idler, and acquired a fondness for belles lettres, more especially for the Italian poets and the rhapsodies of Ossian. His religious doubts seem to have already begun, and have been attributed to his association, at this time, with Governor Fauquier, who was a confirmed free-thinker. The statement is probably true, and he never shook off the sinister influence. Long afterwards he and his friend John Page would discuss

1 The Burwells were an old and worthy family of York and Gloucester. Of Lewis Burwell, Lieutenant-Governor in 1750, it was said that he "had embraced almost every branch of human knowledge in the circle of his studies."

Christianity in the observatory at "Rosewell;" but his pious host could make no impression upon him.

Entering the Burgesses at twenty-six, Jefferson soon became a man of mark. He scarcely ever addressed the House, but was, from the first, in consultation with the leaders who recognized his ability. It was seen that his temperament and views were those of the révolutionnaire. Under the suave and composed manner was an inflexible resolution. He was by nature an iconoclast. His intellect was a machine, which rolled on pitilessly, crushing with its heavy wheels all old-world prejudices. His inexorable logic shrunk from nothing. While other thinkers, even the most advanced, recoiled from the consequences of the abstract principles which they advocated, Jefferson followed out his trains of reasoning to and beyond the bounds of treason. He was the great political free-thinker of his age, as he was a free-thinker on religious questions. He may be styled the American Voltaire, discarding faith as an absurdity, and resting his convictions on the chillest logic. He had no respect for the existing state of things in Virginia. Not only the political fabric but the whole frame-work of society revolted him. He scoffed at the Planter class, to which he himself belonged; called them "cyphers of aristocracy" and denounced them as obstructionists; and even laughed at the claims of his mother's family, the Randolphs, to ancient pedigree, to which every one, he said, 'might ascribe the faith and merit he chose." The flout was gratuitous, for the Randolphs were an old and honorable family, but Jefferson would not spare even his own blood.

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To sum up the character of this remarkable man, he was a skeptic, a democrat, an overturner, and a rebuilder.

From the first he is ready to undermine the very bases of authority; soon he will announce their overthrow, and lay down the principles upon which the new fabric must rest. His "Summary View of the Rights of British America," written in 1774, is the germ of the Declaration. His opinions are already matured. The paper was sent to the Virginia Convention as the proposed basis of instructions to the delegates in Congress, and gives the exact measure of Jefferson's genius as a revolutionary leader. Its tone is bold, almost imperious. The young writer does not mince his words. His Majesty is informed that his officials are "worthless ministerial dependents;" that if the Americans suffered themselves to be transported for trial they would be "cowards meriting the everlasting infamy now fixed on the authors of the Act." The King is notified that "Kings are the servants not the proprietors of the people, and that the whole art of government consists in the art of being honest." The tone of the paper indicates the marked change which had taken place in the attitude of the Americans toward England. It was a long way from "your Majesty's obedient humble servants to these brusque phrases, and Jefferson's concluding words: "This, Sire, is our last, our determined resolution."

The paper was not adopted, but it was ordered to be published, and led to the selection of Jefferson to draft the Declaration of Independence.

VIII.

LEE, MASON, AND PENDLETON.

THE three men who took the most conspicuous part in Virginia affairs after Henry and Jefferson,-if they could be said to come after them, were Richard Henry Lee, George Mason, and Edmund Pendleton.

Richard Henry Lee belonged to a distinguished family of the "Northern Neck," between the Rappahannock and Potomac. He was born at "Stratford," in Westmoreland, in January 1732; and was thus nearly of the exact age of Washington. All the traditions of his family were Cavalier. He was a descendant of the Richard Lee who had plotted with Berkeley to set up the flag of Charles II. in Virginia; and his ancestors had been noted, in all generations, for their royalist sentiments. To look to such a family for a leader against the Crown seemed hopeless, and yet Richard Henry Lee was to prove as much of an extremist as Patrick Henry. He was educated in England, and from his early mauhood took part in public affairs. As early as 1768 he conceived the scheme of the "Committees of Correspondence," and in 1773 procured its adoption in the House of Burgesses. His fame as the mover of the Declaration of Independence was yet to come.

Lee was at this time forty-two years old, graceful in person, extremely cordial in his manners, and so elegant a speaker that he was said to have practiced his gestures before a mirror. He was called the "Gentleman of the Silver Hand," and wore a black bandage on one hand to hide a wound which he had received while shooting

swans on the Potomac. He lived at "Chantilly," in Westmoreland, and enjoyed the regard and respect of the entire community; a quiet gentleman full of suave courtesy, who seemed anything but a revolutionist. And yet of all the great leaders of Virginia at that time, none was readier to go all lengths in resisting the Crown.

tion:

cover it!"

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George Mason, the author of the Virginia Bill of Rights, was one of the greatest men of a great period. He was born in Stafford in 1726, and was the descendant of an officer of the army of Charles II. He was large in person, athletic, with a swarthy complexion, and black eyes, whose expression was described as half sad, half severe." He was a man of reserved address, but his wit was biting. When an opponent in politics said that the people of Fairfax knew that "Colonel Mason's mind was failing him from age," he retorted with mordant sarcasm, that his friend had one consola"when his mind failed him no one would ever disHe lived the life of a planter at "Gunston Hall," on the Potomac, wrapped up in his "dear little family," reading the best English books, and averse to public position, though he had served in the Burgesses, and was recognized as a man of the first ability. His views and the great elements of his character were well known to the leaders. Mason was an American of Americans, and clung to his right with all the vehemence of his strong nature. At the outburst of the great struggle he wrote: "If I can only live to see the American Union firmly fixed, and free governments established in our western world, and can leave to my children but a crust of bread and liberty, I shall die satisfied, and say with the Psalmist, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.'" In the Revolution he wrote, "I will

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