and seen all manner of people, and then had found himself at last in Virginia when he was past forty. For all its rough life, he liked the Old Dominion well enough to adopt it as his home. There was there, he said, "less swearing, less profaneness, less drunkenness and debauchery, less uncharitable feuds and animosities, and less knavery and villany than in any part of the world" where his lot had been. Not all of his neighbors were gentlemen; not very many could afford to send their sons to England to be educated. Men of all sorts had crowded into Virginia: merchants and gentlemen not a few, but also commoner men a great manymariners, artisans, tailors, and men without settled trades or handicrafts of any kind. Spotswood had found it no easy matter when he was Governor to deal patiently with a House of Burgesses to which so many men of "mean understandings" had been sent, and had allowed himself to wax very sarcastic when he found how ignorant some of them were. "I observe," he said, tartly, "that the grand ruling party in your House has not furnished chairmen of two of your standing committees who can spell English or write common-sense, as the grievances under their own handwriting will manifest."

'Twas not a country, either, where one could travel much at ease, for one must ford the streams for lack of bridges, and keep an eye sharply about him as he travelled the rude forest roads when the wind was high lest a rotten tree should fall upon him. Nature was so bountiful, yielded so easy a largess of food, that few men took pains to be thrifty, and some parts of the colony were little more advanced in the arts of life than North Carolina, where, Colonel Byrd said, nothing was dear "but law, physic, and strong drink." No doubt the

average colonist in Virginia, when not sobered by important cares, was apt to be a fellow of coarse fibre, whose

"addiction was to courses vain;

His companies unlettered, rude, and shallow;
His hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sports;
And never noted in him any study,
Any retirement, any sequestration
From open haunts and popularity.”

But to many a scapegrace had come "reformation in
a flood, with such a heady current, scouring faults," as
to make a notable man of him. There were at least
the traditions of culture in the colony, and enough men
of education and refinement to leaven the mass.
ran generously, even if roughly, upon the scattered
plantations, and strong, thinking, high-bred men had
somehow a mastery and leadership in it all which made
them feel Virginia their home and field of honor.

Life

Change of time and of affairs, the stir of growing life in Virginia as she ceased from being a mere colony and became a sturdy commonwealth, boasting her own breed of gentlemen, merchants, scholars, and statesmen, laid upon the Washingtons, as upon other men, a touch of transformation. Seventy-six years had gone by since John Washington came out of Bedfordshire and took up lands on Bridges' Creek in Westmoreland in Virginia, and still his children were to be found in the old seats he had chosen at the first. They had become thorough Virginians with the rest, woven into the close fibre of the new life. Westmoreland and all the counties that lay about it on the Northern Neck were strictly of a piece with the rest of Virginia, for all they had waited. long to be settled. There the Washingtons had become

ކ

country gentlemen of comfortable estate upon the accepted model. John had begotten Lawrence, and Lawrence had begotten Augustine. John had thriftily taken care to see his offspring put in a way to prosper at the very first. He had acquired a substantial property of his own where the land lay very fertile upon the banks of the Potomac, and he had, besides, by three marriages, made good a very close connection with several families that had thriven thereabouts before him. He had become a notable figure, indeed, among his neighbors ere he had been many years in the colony-a colonel in their militia, and their representative in the House of Burgesses; and they had not waited for his death to call the parish in which he lived Washington Parish. His sons and grandsons, though they slackened a little the pace he had set them in his energy at the outset, throve none the less substantially upon the estates he had left them, abated nothing of the dignity and worth they had inherited, lived simply, and kept their place of respect in the parish and state. Wars came and went without disturbing incident for them, as the French moved upon the borders by impulse of politics from over sea; and then long peace set in, equally without incident, to stay a whole generation, while good farming went quietly forward, and politicians at home and in the colonies planned another move in their game. It was in the mid-season of this time of poise, preparation, and expectancy that George Washington was born, on the 22d of February, in the year 1732, "about ten in the morning," William Gooch, gentlest of Marlborough's captains, being Governor in Virginia. He came into the world at the plain but spacious homestead on Bridges' Creek, fourth son, fifth child, of Augustine Washington, and of

the third generation from John Washington, son of the one-time rector of Purleigh. The homestead stood upon a green and gentle slope that fell away, at but a little distance, to the waters of the Potomac, and from it could be seen the broad reaches of the stream stretching wide to the Maryland shore beyond, and flooding with. slow, full tide to the great bay below. The spot gave token of the quiet youth of the boy, of the years of grateful peace in which he was to learn the first lessons of life, ere war and the changing fortunes of his country hurried him to the field and to the council.

3:

George Washington don to Augustine's Mary his Wife roas trom Helmary 17342 about 10 in the Morning of was baptized the 3 :" of april following Mer Beverley Writing & Cap? Christopher Brooks Godfathers and M. Mildred Gregory Gramo there

FAC-SIMILE OF THE ENTRY OF WASHINGTON'S BIRTH IN HIS MOTHER'S BIBLE