There was little chance here for that friction of mind with mind, or for that quick interchange of thought and sentiment and knowledge which are familiar to the dwellers in cities, and which have driven forward more rapidly than all else what we call civilization.  Rare meetings for special objects with persons as solitary in their lives and as ill-informed as himself, constituted to the average Virginian the world of society, and there was nothing from outside to supply the deficiencies at home.  Once a fortnight a mail crawled down from the North, and once a month another crept on to the South.  George Washington was four years old when the first newspaper was published in the colony, and he was twenty when the first actors appeared at Williamsburg.  What was not brought was not sought.  The Virginians did not go down to the sea in ships.  They were not a seafaring race, and as they had neither trade nor commerce they were totally destitute of the inquiring, enterprising spirit, and of the knowledge brought by those pursuits which involve travel and adventure.  The English tobacco-ships worked their way up the rivers, taking the great staple, and leaving their varied goods, and their tardy news from Europe, wherever they stopped.  This was the sum of the information and intercourse which Virginia got from across the sea, for travelers were practically unknown.  Few came on business, fewer still from curiosity.  Stray peddlers from the North, or trappers from beyond the mountains with their packs of furs, chiefly constituted what would now be called the traveling public.  There were in truth no means of traveling except on foot, on horseback, or by boat on the rivers, which formed the best and most expeditious highways.  Stage-coaches, or other public conveyances, were unknown.  Over some of the roads the rich man, with his six horses and black outriders, might make his way in a lumbering carriage, but most of the roads were little better than woodland paths; and the rivers, innocent of bridges, offered in the uncertain fords abundance of inconvenience, not unmixed with peril.  The taverns were execrable, and only the ever-ready hospitality of the people made it possible to get from place to place.  The result was that the Virginians stayed at home, and sought and welcomed the rare stranger at their gates as if they were well aware that they were entertaining angels.

It is not difficult to sift this home-keeping people, and find out that portion which was Virginia, for the mass was but an appendage of the small fraction which ruled, led, and did the thinking for the whole community.  Half the people were slaves, and in that single wretched word their history is told.  They were, on the whole, well and kindly treated, but they have no meaning in history except as an institution, and as an influence in the lives, feelings, and character of the men who made the state.