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CVII. THE VIRGINIANS.

William Makepeace Thackeray (b. 1811, d. 1863). This popular English humorist, essayist, and novelist was born in Calcutta. He was educated at the Charter-house school in London, and at Cambridge, but he did not complete a collegiate course of study. He began his literary career as a contributor to "Fraser's Magazine," under the assumed name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh, and afterwards contributed to the columns of "Punch." The first novel published under Thackeray's own name was "Vanity Fair," which is regarded by many as his greatest work. He afterwards wrote a large number of novels, tales, and poems, most of which were illustrated by sketches drawn by himself. His course of "Lectures on the English Humorists" was delivered in London in 1851, and the following year in several cities in the United States. He revisited the United States n 1856, and delivered a course of lectures on "The Four Georges," which he repeated in Great Britain soon after his return home. In 1860 he became the editor of "The Cornhill Magazine," the most successful serial ever published in England.

1. MR. ESMOND called his American house Castlewood, from the patrimonial home in the old country. The whole usages of Virginia, indeed, were fondly modeled after the English customs. It was a loyal colony. The Virginians boasted that King Charles the Second had been king in Virginia before he had been king in England. English king and English church were alike faithfully honored there.

2. The resident gentry were allied to good English families. They held their heads above the Dutch traders of New York, and the money-getting Roundheads of Pennsylvania and New England. Never were people less republican than those of the great province which was soon to be foremost in the memorable revolt against the British Crown.

3. The gentry of Virginia dwelt on their great lands after a fashion almost patriarchal. For its rough cultivation, each estate had a multitude of hands-of purchased and assigned servants—who were subject to the command of the master. The land yielded their food, live stock, and game.

(5.-21.)

4. The great rivers swarmed with fish for the taking. From their banks the passage home was clear. Their ships took the tobacco off their private wharves on the banks of the Potomac or the James River, and carried it to London or Bristol, bringing back English goods and articles of home manufacture in return for the only produce which the Virginian gentry chose to cultivate.

5. Their hospitality was boundless. No stranger was ever sent away from their gates. The gentry received one another, and traveled to each other's houses, in a state almost feudal. The question of Slavery was not born at the time of which we write. To be the proprietor of black servants shocked the feelings of no Virginia gentleman; nor, in truth, was the despotism exercised over the negro race generally a savage one. The food was plenty: the poor black people lazy and not unhappy. You might have preached negro emancipation to Madam Esmond of Castlewood as you might have told her to let the horses run loose out of her stables; she had no doubt but that the whip and the corn-bag were good for both.

6. Her father may have thought otherwise, being of a skeptical turn on very many points, but his doubts did not break forth in active denial, and he was rather disaffected than rebellious. At one period, this gentleman had taken a part în active life at home, and possibly might have been eager to share its rewards; but in latter days he did not seem to care for them. A something had occurred in his tinge of melancholy over all his

life, which had cast a existence.

7. He was not unhappy, to those about him most kind, —most affectionate, obsequious even to the women of his family, whom he scarce ever contradicted; but there had been some bankruptcy of his heart, which his spirit never recovered. He submitted to life, rather than enjoyed it, and never was in better spirits than in his last hours when he was going to lay it down.

8. When the boy's grandfather died, their mother, in great state, proclaimed her eldest son George her successor and heir of the estate; and Harry, George's younger brother by half an hour, was always enjoined to respect his senior. All the household was equally instructed to pay him honor: the negroes, of whom there was a large and happy family, and the assigned servants from Europe, whose lot was made as bearable as it might be under the government of the lady of Castlewood.

9. In the whole family there scarcely was a rebel save Mrs. Esmond's faithful friend and companion, Madam Mountain, and Harry's foster-mother, a faithful negro woman, who never could be made to understand why her child should not be first, who was handsomer, and stronger, and cleverer than his brother, as she vowed; though, in truth, there was scarcely any difference in the beauty, strength, or stature of the twins.

10. In disposition, they were in many points exceedingly unlike; but in feature they resembled each other so closely, that, but for the color of their hair, it had been difficult to distinguish them. In their beds, and when their heads were covered with those vast, ribboned nightcaps, which our great and little ancestors wore, it was scarcely possible for any but a nurse or a mother to tell the one from the other child.

11. Howbeit, alike in form, we have said that they differed in temper. The elder was peaceful, studious, and silent; the younger was warlike and noisy. He was quick at learning when he began, but very slow at beginning. No threats of the ferule would provoke Harry to learn in an idle fit, or would prevent George from helping his brother in his lesson. Harry was of a strong military turn, drilled the little negroes on the estate, and caned them like a corporal, having many good boxing-matches with them, and never bearing malice if he was worsted; - whereas George was sparing of blows, and gentle with all about him.

12. As the custom in all families was, each of the boys had a special little servant assigned him: and it was a known fact that George, finding his little wretch of a blackamoor asleep on his master's bed, sat down beside it, and brushed the flies off the child with a feather-fan, to the horror of old Gumbo, the child's father, who found his young master so engaged, and to the indignation of Madam Esmond, who ordered the young negro off to the proper officer for a whipping. In vain George implored and entreated-burst into passionate tears, and besought a remission of the sentence. His mother was inflexible regarding the young rebel's punishment, and the little negro went off beseeching his young master not to cry.

13. On account of a certain apish drollery and humor which exhibited itself in the lad, and a liking for some of the old man's pursuits, the first of the twins was the grandfather's favorite and companion, and would laugh and talk out all his infantine heart to the old gentleman, to whom the younger had seldom a word to say.

14. George was a demure, studious boy, and his senses seemed to brighten up in the library, where his brother was so gloomy. He knew the books before he could well-nigh carry them, and read in them long before he could understand them. Harry, on the other hand, was all alive in the stables or in the wood, eager for all parties of hunting and fishing, and promised to be a good sportsman from a very early age.

15. At length the time came when Mr. Esmond was to have done with the affairs of this life, and he laid them down as if glad to be rid of their burden. All who read and heard that discourse, wondered where Parson Broadbent of James Town found the eloquence and the Latin which adorned it. Perhaps Mr. Dempster knew, the boys' Scotch tutor, who corrected the proofs of the oration, which was printed, by the desire of his Excellency and many persons of honor, at Mr. Franklin's press in Philadelphia.

16. No such sumptuous funeral had ever been seen in the country as that which Madam Esmond Warrington ordained for her father, who would have been the first to smile at that pompous grief.

17. The little lads of Castlewood, almost smothered in black trains and hat-bands, headed the procession and were followed by my Lord Fairfax, from Greenway Court, by his Excellency the Governor of Virginia (with his coach), by the Randolphs, the Careys, the Harrisons, the Washingtons, and many others; for the whole country esteemed the departed gentleman, whose goodness, whose high talents, whose benevolence and unobtrusive urbanity, had earned for him the just respect of his neighbors.

18. When informed of the event, the family of Colonel Esmond's step-son, the Lord Castlewood of Hampshire in England, asked to be at the charges of the marble slab which recorded the names and virtues of his lordship's mother and her husband; and after due time of preparation, the monument was set up, exhibiting the arms and coronet of the Esmonds, supported by a little, chubby group of weeping cherubs, and reciting an epitaph which for once did not tell any falsehoods.

DEFINITIONS.-1. Păt-ri-mō'ni-al, inherited from ancestors. 6. Dis-af-feet'ed, discontented. 7. Ob-se qui-oŭs, compliant to excess. 12. Black'a-moor, a negro. 17. Ur-băn'i-ty, civility or courtesy of manners, refinement. 18. Ep'i-tăph (pro. ěp'i-tăf), an inscription on a monument, in honor or in memory of the dead.

NOTES.-2. Roundhead was the epithet applied to the Puritans by the Cavaliers in the time of Charles I. It arose from the practice among the Puritans of cropping their hair peculiarly.

3. Patriarchal. 5. Feudal. The Jewish patriarch, in olden times, and the head of a noble family in Europe, during the Middle Ages, when the “Feudal System," as it is called, existed, both held almost despotic sway, the one over his great number of descendants and relations, and the other over a vast body of sub

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