matter of printing, this pious wish was
well-nigh realized. The first press set up in the colony, about 1681,
was soon suppressed, and found no successor until the year 1729. From
that date until some ten years before the Revolution one printing-press
answered the needs of Virginia, and this was under official control.
The earliest newspaper in the colony was the _Virginia Gazette_,
established in 1736.

In the absence of schools the higher education naturally languished.
Some of the planters were taught at home by tutors, and others went to
England and entered the universities. But these were few in number,
and there was no college in the colony until more than half a century
after the foundation of Harvard in the younger province of
Massachusetts. The college of William and Mary was established at
Williamsburg chiefly by the exertions of the Rev. James Blair, a Scotch
divine, who was sent by the Bishop of London as "commissary" to the
Church in Virginia. The college received its charter in 1693, and held
its first commencement in 1700. It is perhaps significant of the
difference between the Puritans of New England and the so-called
"Cavaliers" of Virginia, that while the former founded and supported
Harvard College in 1636, and Yale in 1701, of {328} their own motion,
and at their own expense, William and Mary received its endowment from
the crown, being provided for in part by a deed of lands and in part by
a tax of a penny a pound on all tobacco exported from the colony. In
return for this royal grant the college was to present yearly to the
king two copies of Latin verse. It is reported of the young Virginian
gentlemen who resorted to the new college that they brought their
plantation manners with them, and were accustomed to "keep race-horses
at the college, and bet at the billiard or other gaming tables."
William and Mary College did a good work for the colony, and educated
some of the great Virginians of the Revolutionary era, but it has never
been a large or flourishing institution, and has held no such relation
to the intellectual development of its section as Harvard and Yale have
held in the colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Even after the
foundation of the University of Virginia, in which Jefferson took a
conspicuous part, southern youths were commonly sent to the North for
their education, and at the time of the outbreak of the civil war there
was a large contingent of southern students