ial and political aristocracy of the
province.

Such were the "men of considerable estates" in whose hands the English
Government was generally well content to leave the control of colonial
politics; and as they were the men who profited most by the connection
with England, they were the men whose outlook upon the world was least
provincial and most European. Planters and merchants of the South,
exporting their staples directly to England, were in constant
communication with their London agents. Business or politics had taken
many of them more than once across the ocean. Not a few had been sent in
their youth to be educated in England; and had resided there for some
years, forming acquaintance with prominent English families, listening
to debates in the Commons or to arguments in the courts of law,
diverting themselves in theaters and coffee-houses, acquiring the latest
modes and mannerisms, moulding themselves upon some favorite model of a
city magnate or country gentleman. In the Northern colonies, trade
relations with England were less direct. Business rarely called the
merchant to Europe; and Yale or Harvard was regarded as a satisfactory
substitute for Oxford or Cambridge. Yet the merchants of Boston and New
York had their agents in many European ports; kept informed of
conditions of trade and shipping throughout the world; and eagerly
scanned the foreign gazettes which recounted the political and social
happenings of Old England. In North and South, the well-to-do, as they
were able, built and furnished their houses upon English models, and
were not content with modes of dress which were known, twelve months
late, not to be the fashion abroad. Especially fortunate were those
whose wealth was dignified by distinction of birth, the walls of whose
houses were hung with oil portraits of eminent ancestors.

And the genuine colonial aristocrat, such as Colonel Byrd or Governor
Thomas Hutchinson, was proud to have it thought that his mind as well as
his house was furnished after the best English fashion. Even more than
others, those who were condemned to be provincials of the province
consciously endeavored, to avoid provincialism of the spirit; to be
mistaken in London for an English gentleman of parts was a much-sought
compensation for being, at Williamsburg or Boston, no more than the
first gentleman of America. In the middle of the eighteenth century,
eccentricity was not yet a mark of genius; and the "best people i