VIRGINIA 95 



elsewhere assembled, and so bring about production. 

 Such a life is unfavorable for kindling in young minds 

 a love for science, enthusiasm, and the spirit of emula- 

 tion. Thus the young people of Virginia follow after 

 their fathers, relations, and neighbors, and grow up 

 without much literary instruction, which they either 

 have small occasion for or hold to be superfluous. A 

 Virginia youth of 15 years is already such a man as 

 he will be at twice that age. At 15, his father gives 

 him a horse and a negro, with which he riots about the 

 country, attends every fox-hunt, horse-race, and cock- 

 fight, and does nothing else whatever; a wife is his 

 next and only care. A gentleman of Petersburg told 

 me that he would be sending his son to Edinburgh to 

 make a doctor of him, since he now doubted whether 

 he would ever marry and take over a plantation, his 

 age being already 21 years. However, one would be 

 very unreasonable if unwilling to admit that the Vir- 

 ginians on all occasions show clear and penetrating 

 powers of mind ; only it is a pity that a taste for the 

 sciences is not yet so general among them as among 

 their neighbors farther north. Also it must be granted 

 that the Virginians have a rather superior look ; they 

 are for the most part well-built, slender, and of an active 

 figure, their faces well-modelled, and one seldom sees 

 among them crippled or deformed people, those ex- 

 cepted who have been maimed in the war or by acci- 

 dent. + 



Rainy weather prevented our leaving Smithfield the 

 next forenoon ; but we were unwilling to tarry longer 

 here, although we could scarcely reach the nearest 

 tavern, 20 miles off, without running the risk as night 

 fell, of going astray in the eternal woods. We were 



