sides,
is one solid rock of lime-stone.

The arch approaches the semi-elliptical form; but the larger axis of
the ellipsis, which would be the cord of the arch, is many times
longer than the transverse. Though the sides of this bridge are
provided in some parts with a parapet of fixed rocks, yet few men have
the resolution to walk to them, and look over into the abyss. You
involuntarily fall on your hands and feet, creep to the parapet, and
peep over it. Looking down from this height about a minute, gave me a
violent head-ach.

If the view from the top be painful and intolerable, that from below
is delightful in an equal extreme. It is impossible for the emotions
arising from the sublime, to be felt beyond what they are here: so
beautiful an arch, so elevated, so light, and springing as it were up
to heaven! the rapture of the spectator is really indescribable! The
fissure continuing narrow, deep, and straight, for a considerable
distance above and below the bridge, opens a short but very pleasing
view of the North mountain on one side, and Blue ridge on the other,
at the distance each of them of about five miles. This bridge is in
the county of Rockbridge, to which it has given name, and affords a
public and commodious passage over a valley, which cannot be crossed
elsewhere for a considerable distance. The stream passing under it is
called Cedar-creek.

ON FREEDOM OF RELIGIOUS OPINION.

Compulsion makes hypocrites, not converts.

It is error alone that needs the support of government: truth can
stand by itself.

ON THE DISCOURSES OF CHRIST.

Such are the fragments remaining to us to show a master-workman, and
that his system of morality was the most benevolent and sublime that
has ever been taught, and consequently more perfect than those of any
of the ancient philosophy.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.

(_From an Act Passed in the Assembly of Virginia, 1786._)

Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all
attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by
civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and
meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our
religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to
propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to
do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as
well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and
uninspired men, have