Page:A Life of Matthew Fontaine Maury.pdf/17

Rh Governor Nelson bought 1000 horses for the service of his State; on another he subscribed 200,000 dollars. Mann Page, afterwards governor, fed Washington's army for a week from the supplies of his own plantations.

These Virginians had become a proud and happy race. It is to them we owe that scheme of civil liberty which has blessed the American people, and is today extending its happy influences over the world. Inheriting ample fortunes, they were educated in the best schools of the old country, whence they returned to their estates, and passed their lives in contemplating the great possibilities awaiting the new world, and in devising the means by which the capabilities of their adopted country could be developed. Living like patriarchs, freed from all monetary cares, with minds stored with the precedents of history, and knowing no short cuts to knowledge, these men thought out and finally proclaimed that plan of self government which is today the admiration and desire of all the peoples of the earth. Thus George Mason of Gunston Hall composed the "Bill of Rights of Virginia," on which Jefferson afterwards based the Declaration of Independence of the United States.

The Church of England was the only church of the colony. Its edifices, built of English bricks, still stand amidst the graves of old Virginia. Many of them are empty and silent now, serving only as monuments of the dead generations of a noble race. Others have been repaired and modernized by the iconoclasts of these times, and still resound with the grand old ritual of the Church.

Into this Virginia community the Huguenots came, bringing with them the simple service of their creed, the influence of which is still felt in the Low Church observances of their adopted country. These Huguenots, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, became a persecuted Rh