“the Nelsons, the Pages, the Byrds, and Fairfaxes, living in their palaces, and driving their coaches and sixes, or the good old Virginia gentlemen in the Assembly drinking their twenty and forty bowls of rack punches, and madeira and claret, in lieu of a knot of deputy sheriffs and hack attorneys, each with his cruet of whiskey before him, and puddle of tobacco-spittle between his legs.”

He was as far from seeing any relation of cause and effect between the coaches, palaces, and bowls of punch, and the “knot of deputy sheriffs,” as a Fenian is from discerning any connection between the Irish rackrenting of the last century, and the Irish beggary of this.  Like conditions produce like characters.  How interesting to discover in this republican, this native Virginian of English stock, a perfect and splendid specimen of a species of tory supposed to exist only in such countries as Poland, Spain, Ireland, and the Highlands of Scotland, but which in reality does abound in the Southern States of this Union,—­the tory, conscious of his country’s ruin, but clinging with fanatical and proud tenacity to the principles that ruined it.

Dear tobacco, virgin land, and cheap negroes gave the several families in Virginia, for three generations, a showy, delusive prosperity, which produced a considerable number of dissolute, extravagant men, and educated a few to a high degree of knowledge and wisdom.  Of these families, the Randolphs were the most numerous, and among the oldest, richest, and most influential.  The soldiers of the late army of the Potomac know well the lands which produced the tobacco that maintained them in baronial state.  It was on Turkey Island (an island no more), twenty miles below Richmond; close to Malvern Hill of immortal memory, that the founder of the family settled in 1660,—­a Cavalier of ancient Yorkshire race ruined in the civil wars.  Few of our troops, perhaps, who rambled over Turkey Bend, were aware that the massive ruins still visible there, and which served as negro quarters seven years ago, are the remains of the great and famous mansion built by this Cavalier, turned tobacco-planter.  This home of the Randolphs was so elaborately splendid, that a man served out the whole term of his apprenticeship to the trade of carpenter in one of its rooms.  The lofty dome was for many years a beacon to the navigator.  Such success had this Randolph in raising tobacco during the fifty-one years of his residence upon Turkey Island, that to each of his six sons he gave or left a large estate, besides portioning liberally his two daughters.  Five of these sons reared families, and the sons of those sons were also thriving and prolific men; so that, in the course of three generations, Virginia was full of Randolphs.  There was, we believe, not one of the noted controlling families that was not related to them by blood or marriage.