manner, neither she nor her parents were disposed to comply. The suitor became furious, and persisted for years in his determination, which seems to have been as much a matter of pride, as of sentiment. He took pains to wreak his wrath on every one who opposed the match, going so far as to threaten the lives of the unwilling young woman’s father and brother. To Commissary Blair he declared that, if she married any one but himself, he would cut the throats of three men—the bridegroom, the minister, and the justice who issued the license. Strangely enough, the damsel was not attracted by this wild wooing; and, as a candid friend wrote to the furious lover, “It is not here, as in some barbarous countries, where the tender lady is dragged into the Sultan’s arms reeking with the blood of her relatives.” Though this affair created such a stir throughout the Colony of Virginia and lasted so long a time, no record has remained of the young heroine’s after fate, except the fact that she did not become Lady Nicholson; not even her Christian name has come down to posterity, to whom she remains a shadowy divinity.

A noticeable feature of Colonial life in Virginia, is the belleship of widows. The girls seem to have stood no chance against their fascinations. Washington, and Jefferson, and Madison each married one. In the preceding century, Sir William Berkeley, who had brought no lady with him across the water, was taken captive by a young widow of Warwick County, a certain Dame Frances Stevens, who, after thirty-two years of married life, being again left a widow by Berkeley’s death, wedded with her late husband’s secretary, Philip Ludwell—holding fast, however, to her title of Lady Berkeley. Lord Culpeper writes in a letter of 1680, “My Lady Berkeley is married to Mr. Ludwell; and thinks no more of our world.” It is to be hoped that the secretary whom the lady took for her third husband, proved a more amiable companion than the fiery old Governor, whose pride and bitter obstinacy wrought such havoc after Bacon’s rebellion, that the reports of his cruelties echoed to the shores of England. Edmund Cheesman, a follower of Bacon’s, being brought up for trial, Berkeley asked him: “Why did you engage in Bacon’s designs?” Before Cheesman could answer, his young wife, falling on her knees, exclaimed: “My provocation made my husband join in the cause for which Bacon contended. But for me he had never done what he has done. Let me bear the punishment, but let my husband be pardoned!” Where was the chivalry of that Cavalier blood on which Berkeley prided himself? We read that her prayer availed her husband nothing, and procured only insult to herself.

Our sympathy with Bacon, in his rebellion against Berkeley’s tyranny, makes us doubly regretful that he should have stained his career by a deed of cowardice and cruelty. It was one of those blunders worse than crimes, and gave him and his followers the contemptuous appellation of “White Aprons.” When Bacon made his sudden turn on Sir William Berkeley, he established his headquarters at Green Spring, Berkeley’s own mansion. There he threw up breastworks in front of his palisades, and then sent out detachments of horsemen, who scoured the country and brought back to camp the wives of prominent Berkeleyites. Among these dames were Madam Bray, Madam Page, Madam Ballard, and Madam Bacon—the last, the wife of the rebel’s kinsman. Bacon then sent one of the dames to the town under a flag of truce, to inform the husbands that he intended to place them in front of his men while he constructed his earthworks. “The poor gentlewomen were mightily astonished, and neather were their husbands void of amazement at this subtile invention. The husbands thought it indeed wonderful that their innocent and harmless wives should thus be entered a white garde to the Divell”—the Divell, of course, being General Bacon, who, thus protected by The White Aprons, finished his fortifications in security; gaining a reputation for “subtility,” but tarnishing his character for gallantry.

As society grew more stable, it grew also more complex. The buying of wives gave way to sentimental courtships, and men also began to learn the advantages of a single life. In Maryland so many took this view, that we find the old statutes imposing a tax on bachelors over twenty-five years of age, of five shillings, for estates under three hundred pounds sterling, or twenty shillings when over; a tax which seems to have been more successful as a means of raising money than of promoting matrimony; for we find the record of its payment by a surprising number of bachelors, St. Ann’s parish vestry-books alone showing thirty-four such derelicts. Perhaps, however, this celibacy did not indicate so much aversion to marriage, as inability to meet the growing demands for luxury. The obstinate bachelors may have felt with regard to matrimony as Alsop did with regard to liberty, that “without money it is like a man opprest with the gout—every step he takes forward puts him to pain.” The Abbé Robin at a later day says of Annapolis: “Female luxury here exceeds what is known in the provinces of France. A French hair-dresser is a man of importance; it is said a certain dame here, hires one of that craft at a thousand crowns a year salary.” The very rumors of such extravagance must have frightened frugal young men!

The Colonial maiden came into society and married, at an age which now seems surprisingly early. Chief-Justice Marshall met and fell in love with his wife when she was fourteen, and married her at sixteen. An unmarried woman of over twenty-five, was looked upon as a hopeless and confirmed old maid and spoken of, like Miss Wilkins, of Boston, as “a pitiable spectacle.” It may be that this extreme youth of the maids explains the attraction of the widows, who had more social experience. Burnaby writes in a very unhandsome manner of his impressions of the Virginia ladies whom he met in his American tour, and generalizes with true British freedom on slight acquaintance with the facts. He admits grudgingly that the women of Virginia are handsome, “though not to be compared with our fair countrywomen in England. They have but few advantages, and consequently are seldom accomplished. This makes them reserved and unequal to any interesting or refined conversation. They are immoderately fond of dancing, and, indeed, it is almost the only amusement they partake of; but even in this, they discover great want of taste and elegance, and seldom appear with that gracefulness and ease which these movements are so calculated to display. Toward the close of an evening, when the company are pretty well tired with contra-dances, it is usual to dance jigs—a practice originally borrowed, I am informed, from the negroes. The Virginia ladies, excepting these amusements, and now and then a party of pleasure into the woods to partake of a barbecue, cheerfully spend their time in sewing and taking care of their families.”

Another traveller makes a better report, and draws more favorable conclusions.

“Young women are affable with young men in America,” he writes, “and married women are reserved, and their husbands are not as familiar with the girls as they were, when bachelors. If a young man were to take it into his head that his betrothed should not be free and gay in her social intercourse, he would run the risk of being discarded, incur the reputation of jealousy, and would find it very difficult to get married. Yet if a single woman were to play the coquette, she would be regarded with contempt. As this innocent freedom between the sexes diminishes in proportion as society loses its