there is no clear evidence and for us it matters not. Our business is with Peter.

A man in all the noble senses of that noble word-a stalwart frame, a giant's strength, unflagging industry, unflinching endurance, indomitable courage, a perfect honesty massive, steady, silent, trusty, calm, foreseeing man. He could head up two hogshead of tobacco at once, weighing about a thousand pounds apiece, one with either hand. With Professor Joshua Fry, of William and Mary College, he surveyed the boundary between Virginia and North Carolina from the point where Colonel Byrd's line had ended through a wilderness of wild beasts and Indians; he wearied out all his crops and leaving them scattered along the line pushed on; he ate up all his food, killed his mule, loaded the flesh on his own back and still pushed on; sleeping in hollow trees at night, to guard against ravening beasts, cutting his way by day through untamed forests, he still pushed on and blazed out the line, paced the distances, took the bearings, and came back safe and sound with his survey done. Such a man was our Peter-a rock on whom God might well build a state as on another He built a church.

Peter has been called a Plebeian by his people who were not ashamed to express thus their enmity to his illustrious son. He was a plebean whose ancestor perhaps sat in the first representative assembly in America; who was the colonel of his country and held back the hostile Indians from her borders; who was the local magistrate and a vestryman of his church; who represented his people in the Virginia House of Burgesses; who was the chosen associate of a certain learned William & Mary Professor in the earliest State surveys; who loved his Shakespeare and his Addison, his Swift and his Pope; who was the bosom friend of a Randolph and became his executor and the guardian of his only son; who married the daughter of the proudest of all the Virginia gentry; who was trusted and honored alike by Indian chieftains and by Virginia gentlemen. Such a plebeian as Peter is a good enough aristocrat for me. Men have called Peter Jefferson a plebeian, just as they have called Luther an apostate and Lee a traitor. Well were it for this world of ours if there were more like them.

Let us turn our eyes now to another scene in the Old Dominion. It is the home of one of the great tobacco lords of the colony, Isham Randolph, third child of the William Randolph who settled on the James below Richmond, at Turkey Island, in 1660, and founded one of the great Virginia houses of the olden time. They were aristocratic folk-the Randolphs, tracing their lineage back to the Scotch Earls of Murray, the Ishams being English baronets. Isham Randolph himself is described by the botanist Bartram as a "generous good-natured gentleman, well respected by most who are acquainted with him." He had a great house at Dungeness on the James above Richmond, and big plantations there and elsewhere. About this mansion it is said a hundred servants waited. He was the friend and correspondent of men of science in London as well as in America, and Bartram's introduction came to him from Peter Collinson, an English botanist, who warns Bartram as to his attire when he shall go to visit at Dungeness. Collinson, who was a dealer in woolen cloths, and had sent Bartram as a gift stuff for a suit, writes as follows:

"One thing I must desire of thee, and do insist that thee oblidge me therein; that thee make up that drugget clothes to go to Virginia in and not appear to disgrace thyself or me. For though I should not esteem thee less to come to me in what dress thou will, yet these Virginians are a very gentle, well dressed people, and look perhaps more at a man's outside than his inside. For these and other reasons pray go very clean, neat and handsomely dressed to Virginia."

Into this stately home of "very gentle, well dressed people' our so-called plebeian Peter Jefferson was introduced by his friend, William Randolph, nephew of the host. The oldest child was a daughter, Jane, born in London in the parish of Shadwell, which had been her mother's home. Peter saw Jane, a girl of seventeen, lively and lovable, and loved her; and Jane, Desdemona like, conquered by tales of strength and fortitude told about that silent wooer from the backwoods, let her heart go out to Peter, and soon they were betrothed. Then it was that Peter Jefferson began his home-building at the foot of Monticello. William Randolph celebrated his own joy at the betrothal of his cousin to his friend by selling him four hundred additional

acres adjoining his own tract of a thousand acres, the price named in the deed being "Henry Weatherbourne's biggest bowl of arrack punch." On this land Peter Jefferson built his home, a house like many another of that early day-a story and a half, four rooms to the floor, plain and big and comfortable-and then when all was ready he went back to Dungeness and brought home his bride. In her honour he called the place Shadwell. On it she lived all the residue of her days, as wife until Peter's sudden death in 1757, as widow until 1776. In 1770 the home was burned to the ground with all its contents, save young Tom's fiddle, but Mrs. Jefferson only moved into an overseer's house. Thomas was the third of ten children born in the Shadwell home. While he loved and honoured his mother, he gave to the father whom he lost so early his peculiar devotion. To the end of life he never wearied of paying tribute to that father's far-seeing wisdom and affection.

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE.

Thomas Jefferson was fourteen years old when his father died and left him to be the heir of his fortune and the head of his family. Guardians were appointed for the lad— first Mr. John Harvey, and after his death Dr. Thomas Walker—but young Jefferson was so manly, so clever, so dependable, that the guardians let him go his own gait. He was a tall fellow, growing in the end to be six feet two inches, and in muscular strength and activity he surpassed all his companions. He had huge hands and feet, red hair, a reddish skin, a freckled face, high cheek-bones and a projecting chin. In youth ugly, at maturity he had acquired a pleasing person and in old age he came to be a handsome man. His eyes were hazel gray, his teeth perfect, his countenance bright and expressive. His manner was shy and cold until acquaintance melted away reserve, and then became most sweet and engaging. He was always even in boyhood a fine horseman, a dead shot, a practised swimmer, a good dancer, a clever fiddler. His father had seen to it that he had good teachers, first Rev. William Douglas, and after that Rev. James Maury; the latter especially a broad minded man of genuine scholarship and high feeling. Under these instructors he learned his Latin and his Greek well, together with the principles of numerical arithmetic, and by the end

of 1759 he came to feel that he was ready for college. In 1760 with his guardian's consent he was entered with advanced standing at William and Mary; in December, 1762, he had been graduated from the college, had been admitted as a law student to the office of George Wythe, and was headed for Shadwell with "Coke-upon-Lyttleton" in his trunk.

It was upon his journey to William and Mary and during his residence there, that Jefferson first felt in its fullness the vivid warmth and charm of the aristocratic life of old Virginia. His mother's kinsfolk grasped their young kinsman's hand and drew him cordially into the charming circle of their intimate friendship. His favorite professor, Dr. Small, the acknowledged center of intellectual force in the faculty at Williamsburg, won by the country lad's sweet manliness and quick intelligence, made of this pupil the chosen companion of his leisure hours, introduced him to the notice and hospitality of the Royal Governor the elegant, accomplished, brilliant, and generous Fauquier-and laid for him the foundation of a lifelong friendship with George Wythe, the great Virginian jurist. Jefferson called the Colonial Governor Fauquier "the ablest man who ever filled that office, and tells how much he owed of stimulus and instruction to constant association with these eminent men as they gathered day by day around the Royal Governor's "familiar table." On the other hand our young heir saw all the other phases of his novel life. William and Mary drew within her walls men like Thomas Jefferson and John Page; but she also had her full contingent of cocky young aristocrats with well lined pockets and empty heads; while the Governor's Court drew to Williamsburg all the grandees and all the debauchees of the Colony. On his own admission our Thomas was not unacquainted with horse races and cock fights, with card players and foxhunters. In his first year he kept a few fine horses of his own and spent a trifle of money. But after that he settled down to hard work, varied by an occasional dance in the Apollo room with some beauty of the Court or an evening of music at the Governor's palace. So it was that she whom he named "the fair Belinda"-Mistress Rebecca Burdwell-enslaved his young heart and gave him to drink of the wholesome bitter of disappointed affection. But through it all

Jefferson remained the clear-souled, warm-hearted country boy. Fauquier was an inveterate gambler, but Jefferson never touched a card. Cousin Randolph or Cousin Cary might in the polite colonial phrase become "disguised with drink," but Jefferson stuck through all his youth to plain water. So he remained to the end of his days-temperate and clean beyond the common wont of men. The shameful accusations brought by his political adversaries against his private life at a latter date have been proved to be absolutely without foundation.* Through all the fourscore and three years of his life no vulgar amour, no vinous debauch, no fever of the card table ever smirched the fair fame of Thomas Jefferson.

And now I think we may begin our answer to the question with which we set out-Who was Thomas Jefferson? He was a man in whose veins mingled the two streams of blood which united have in all ages given to humanity its prophets and its priests and its kings, the plebeian red of Peter and the aristocratic blue of Jane; the progeny of manly force and womanly sweetness, of virile energy and feminine refinement. From the father came the big bones and hard muscles, the hunter's eye and the horseman's grip, the clear head and the steady poise, the love for science and for the outdoor life. From the mother came that suavity of address and sympathy of attention which made him so irresistible in private conference; that fluent style with either tongue or pen; that warmth of heart which beautified every hour of his domestic life; that tenderness of spirit, which made him mother as well as father to his orphaned daughters and called forth from their young hearts a mingled stream of adoring reverence and trustful love.

He was a man trained in both the great gymnasia of modern civilization-the country and the town. In his affluent but simple Albemarle home there came to him all the pleasures and the disciplines of rural life-hunting and fishing and swimming and riding; music and dancing and school and study; the unaffected courtesies of good neighborhood; the simple reverence of the old time religious faith; the social frankness of democratic equality. In Jefferson's boyhood not one of the great Virginian

* In questions of paternity the testimonies of date and place are irrefutable.