instruments, their coaches and even their clothes were
still imported from England and were made after the latest English
fashions. John Bernard noted with astonishment that their favorite
topics of conversation were European. "I found," he says, "men leading
secluded lives in the woods of Virginia perfectly au fait as to the
literary, dramatic, and personal gossip of London and Paris." The lack
of good educational facilities in Virginia led many of the wealthy
planters to send their sons to England to enter the excellent schools
or universities there. Even after the establishment of William and
Mary College, the advantages to be derived from several years'
residence in the Old World, induced parents to send their sons to
Oxford or Cambridge. The culture, the ideas and habits there acquired
by the young Virginia aristocrats exerted a powerful influence upon
society in the Old Dominion.

But the peculiar conditions of the new country could not fail to
modify profoundly the life of the colonists. Despite the intimacy with
England and despite the tenacity with which the people clung to
British customs, Virginia society in both the 17th and 18th centuries
was different in many respects from that of the mother country. The
absence of towns eliminated from colonial life much that was
essentially English. There could be no counterpart of the coffee
house, the political club, the literary circle. And even rural
conditions were different. The lack of communication and the size of
the plantations could not fail to produce a social life unlike that of
the thickly settled country districts of England.

We note in Virginia a marked contrast between the 17th and 18th
centuries in the mode of living of the planters. In the first hundred
years of the colony's existence there was a conspicuous lack of that
elegance in the houses, the furniture, the vehicles, the table ware,
etc., that was so much in evidence at the time of the Revolution. This
was due in part to the newness of the country. It was impossible amid
the forests of America, where artisans were few and unskillful, to
imitate all the luxuries of England, and the planters were as yet too
busily employed in reducing the resources of the country to their
needs to think of more than the ordinary comforts of life. Moreover,
the wealth of the colony was by no means great. Before the end of the
century some of the planters had accumulated fortunes of some size,
but there were few t