still be found, in some sections of Virginia, plantations conducted on
this principle, where the fleece is sheared, and the wool is carded,
spun, woven and made into clothing by domestic labor, and where a few
groceries and finer fabrics of clothing are all that are required, by
the independent planter, from the busy world beyond his little domain.

Numerous as were the duties and responsibilities that devolved upon the
planter, he met them with cheerfulness and discharged them with
faithfulness. The dignity of the master was blended with the kind
attention of the friend on the one hand, and the obedience of the slave,
with the fidelity of a grateful dependent, on the other. And thus was
illustrated, in their true beauty, the blessings of that much abused
but happy institution, which should ever remain, as it has ever been
placed by the commentators of our law, next in position, as it is in
interest, to the tender relation of parent and child.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The immense grants taken up by early patentees, in this country,
justifies this language, which might otherwise seem an extravagant
hyperbole.

[2] _Cujus est solum, ejus est usque ad coelum._

CHAPTER III.

"An old worshipful gentleman, who had a great estate,
That kept a brave old house at a bountiful rate,--
With an old lady whose anger one word assuages,--
Like an old courtier of the queen's,
And the queen's old courtier."
_Old Ballad._

A pleasant home was that old Windsor Hall, with its broad fields in
cultivation around it, and the dense virgin forest screening it from
distant view, with the carefully shaven sward on the velvet lawn in
front, and the tall forest poplars standing like sentries in front of
the house, and the venerable old oak tree at the side, with the rural
wooden bench beneath it, where Hansford and Virginia used to sit and
dream of future happiness, while the tame birds were singing sweetly to
their mates in the green branches above them. And the house, too, with
its quaint old frame, its narrow windows, and its substantial furniture,
all brought from England and put down here in this new land for the
comfort of the loyal old colonist. It had been there for years, that old
house, and the moss and lichen had fastened on its shelving roof, and
the luxuriant vine had been trained to clamber closely by its sides,
exposing its red trumpet flo