an immense pride of descent, increased by the habit of domination.  Indolent and energetic by turns; rich in natural gifts and often poor in book-learning, though some, in the lack of good teaching at home, had been bred in the English universities; high-spirited, generous to a fault; keeping open house in their capacious mansions, among vast tobacco-fields and toiling negroes, and living in a rude pomp where the fashions of St. James were somewhat oddly grafted on the roughness of the plantation,—­what they wanted in schooling was supplied by an education which books alone would have been impotent to give, the education which came with the possession and exercise of political power, and the sense of a position to maintain, joined to a bold spirit of independence and a patriotic attachment to the Old Dominion.  They were few in number; they raced, gambled, drank, and swore; they did everything that in Puritan eyes was most reprehensible; and in the day of need they gave the United Colonies a body of statesmen and orators which had no equal on the continent.  A vigorous aristocracy favors the growth of personal eminence, even in those who are not of it, but only near it.

The essential antagonism of Virginia and New England was afterwards to become, and to remain for a century, an element of the first influence in American history.  Each might have learned much from the other; but neither did so till, at last, the strife of their contending principles shook the continent.  Pennsylvania differed widely from both.  She was a conglomerate of creeds and races,—­English, Irish, Germans, Dutch, and Swedes; Quakers, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Romanists, Moravians, and a variety of nondescript sects.  The Quakers prevailed in the eastern districts; quiet, industrious, virtuous, and serenely obstinate.  The Germans were strongest towards the centre of the colony, and were chiefly peasants; successful farmers, but dull, ignorant, and superstitious.  Towards the west were the Irish, of whom some were Celts, always quarrelling with their German neighbors, who detested them; but the greater part were Protestants of Scotch descent, from Ulster; a vigorous border population.  Virginia and New England had each a strong distinctive character.  Pennsylvania, with her heterogeneous population, had none but that which she owed to the sober neutral tints of Quaker existence.  A more thriving colony there was not on the continent.  Life, if monotonous, was smooth and contented.  Trade and the arts grew.  Philadelphia, next to Boston, was the largest town in British America; and was, moreover, the intellectual centre of the middle and southern colonies.  Unfortunately, for her credit in the approaching war, the Quaker influence made Pennsylvania non-combatant.  Politically, too, she was an anomaly; for, though utterly unfeudal in disposition and character, she was under feudal superiors in the persons of the representatives of William Penn, the original grantee.