somewhat hotter in summer, and not altogether so cold in winter as in England, yet so agreable is it to our constitutions that now ’t is more rare to hear of a man’s death than in England; for water, most wholesome and verie plentifull; and for fayre navigable rivers and good harbors, no countrey in Christendom, in so small a circuite, is so well stored.”  Any one who has passed through the State, or paid any attention to its resources, may go far beyond the old settler’s statement.  Virginia is a State combining, as in some divinely planned garden, every variety of soil known on earth, resting under a sky that Italy alone can match, with a Valley anticipating in vigor the loam of the prairies:  up to that Valley and Piedmont stretch throughout the State navigable rivers, like fingers of the Ocean-hand, ready to bear to all marts the produce of the soil, the superb vein of gold, and the iron which, unlocked from mountain-barriers, could defy competition.  But in her castle Virginia is still, a sleeping beauty awaiting the hero whose kiss shall recall her to life.  Comparing what free labor has done for the granite rock called Massachusetts, and what slave labor has done for the enchanted garden called Virginia, one would say, that, though the Dutch ship that brought to our shores the Norway rat was bad, and that which brought the Hessian fly was worse, the most fatal ship that ever cast anchor in American waters was that which brought the first twenty negroes to the settlers of Jamestown.  Like the Indian in her own aboriginal legend, on whom a spell was cast which kept the rain from falling on him and the sun from shining on him, Virginia received from that Dutch ship a curse which chained back the blessings which her magnificent resources would have rained upon her, and the sun of knowledge shining everywhere has left her to-day more than eighty thousand white adults who cannot read or write.

It was at an early period as manifest as now that a slave population implied and rendered necessary a large poor-white population.  And whilst the pilgrims of Plymouth inaugurated the free-school system in their first organic law, which now renders it impossible for one sane person born in their land to be unable to read and write, Virginia was boasting with Lord Douglas in “Marmion,”

  “Thanks to Saint Bothan, son of mine
  Could never pen a written line.”

Sir William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia for thirty-six years, beginning with 1641, wrote to the King as follows:—­“I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels upon the best governments.  God keep us from both!” Most fearfully has the prayer been answered.  In Berkeley’s track nearly all the succeeding ones went on.  Henry A. Wise boasted in Congress that no newspaper was printed in his district, and he soon became governor.