d
puddle of tobacco-spittle between his legs."

He was as far from seeing any relation of cause and effect between the
coaches, palaces, and bowls of punch, and the "knot of deputy
sheriffs," as a Fenian is from discerning any connection between the
Irish rackrenting of the last century, and the Irish beggary of this.
Like conditions produce like characters. How interesting to discover
in this republican, this native Virginian of English stock, a perfect
and splendid specimen of a species of tory supposed to exist only in
such countries as Poland, Spain, Ireland, and the Highlands of
Scotland, but which in reality does abound in the Southern States of
this Union,--the tory, conscious of his country's ruin, but clinging
with fanatical and proud tenacity to the principles that ruined it.

Dear tobacco, virgin land, and cheap negroes gave the several families
in Virginia, for three generations, a showy, delusive prosperity,
which produced a considerable number of dissolute, extravagant men,
and educated a few to a high degree of knowledge and wisdom. Of these
families, the Randolphs were the most numerous, and among the oldest,
richest, and most influential. The soldiers of the late army of the
Potomac know well the lands which produced the tobacco that maintained
them in baronial state. It was on Turkey Island (an island no more),
twenty miles below Richmond; close to Malvern Hill of immortal memory,
that the founder of the family settled in 1660,--a Cavalier of ancient
Yorkshire race ruined in the civil wars. Few of our troops, perhaps,
who rambled over Turkey Bend, were aware that the massive ruins still
visible there, and which served as negro quarters seven years ago, are
the remains of the great and famous mansion built by this Cavalier,
turned tobacco-planter. This home of the Randolphs was so elaborately
splendid, that a man served out the whole term of his apprenticeship
to the trade of carpenter in one of its rooms. The lofty dome was for
many years a beacon to the navigator. Such success had this Randolph
in raising tobacco during the fifty-one years of his residence upon
Turkey Island, that to each of his six sons he gave or left a large
estate, besides portioning liberally his two daughters. Five of these
sons reared families, and the sons of those sons were also thriving
and prolific men; so that, in the course of three generations,
Virginia was full of Randolphs. There was, we believe, not one of the