5.  Dear country home! can I forget
     The least of thy sweet trifles? 
   The window vines that clamber yet,
     Whose blooms the bee still rifles? 
   The roadside blackberries, growing ripe,
   And in the woods the Indian pipe?

6.  Happy the man who tills his field,
     Content with rustic labor;
   Earth does to him her fullness yield,
     Hap what may to his neighbor. 
   Well days, sound nights—­oh, can there be
   A life more rational and free?

Note.—­5.  The Indian pipe is a little, white plant, bearing a white, bell-shaped flower.

CVII.  THE VIRGINIANS.

William Makepeace Thackeray (b. 1811, d. 1863).  This popular English humorist, essayist, and novelist was born in Calcutta.  He was educated at the Charterhouse school in London, and at Cambridge, but he did not complete a collegiate course of study.  He began his literary career as a contributor to “Fraser’s Magazine,” under the assumed name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh, and afterwards contributed to the column of “Punch.”  The first novel published under Thackeray’s own name was “Vanity Fair,” which is regarded by many as his greatest work.  He afterwards wrote a large number of novels, tales, and poems, most of which were illustrated by sketches drawn by himself.  His course of “Lectures on the English Humorists” was delivered in London in 1851, and the following year in several cities in the United States.  He revisited the United States in 1856, and delivered a course of lectures on “The Four Georges,” which he repeated in Great Britain soon after his return home.  In 1860 he became the editor of “The Cornhill Magazine,” the most successful serial ever published in England.

1.  Mr. Esmond called his American house Castlewood, from the patrimonial home in the old country.  The whole usages of Virginia, indeed, were fondly modeled after the English customs.  It was a loyal colony.  The Virginians boasted that King Charles the Second had been king in Virginia before he had been king in England.  English king and English church were alike faithfully honored there.

2.  The resident gentry were allied to good English families.  They held their heads above the Dutch traders of New York, and the money-getting Roundheads of Pennsylvania and New England.  Never were people less republican than those of the great province which was soon to be foremost in the memorable revolt against the British Crown.

3.  The gentry of Virginia dwelt on their great lands after a fashion almost patriarchal.  For its rough cultivation, each estate had a multitude of hands—­of purchased and assigned servants—­who were subject to the command of the master.  The land yielded their food, live stock, and game.

4.  The great rivers swarmed with fish for the taking.  From their banks the passage home was clear.  Their ships took the tobacco off their private wharves on the banks of the Potomac or the James River, and carried it to London or Bristol,—­bringing back English goods and articles of home manufacture in return for the only produce which the Virginian gentry chose to cultivate.