pron and plain gingham dress, she assisted her busy mother in the
preparation of pickles and preserves.

There was another source of happiness to the fair Virginia, in which she
will be more apt to secure the sympathy of our gentler readers. Among
the numerous suitors who sought her hand, was one who had early gained
her heart, and with none of the cruel crosses, as yet, which the young
and inexperienced think add piquancy to the bliss of love; with the full
consent of her parents, she had candidly acknowledged her preference,
and plighted her troth, with all the sincerity of her young heart, to
the noble, the generous, the brave Thomas Hansford.

CHAPTER II.

"Heaven forming each on other to depend,
A master, or a servant, or a friend,
Bids each on other for assistance call,
Till one man's weakness grows the strength of all.
Wants, frailties, passions, closer still ally
The common interest, or endear the tie.
To these we owe true friendship, love sincere,
Each homefelt joy that life inherits here."
_Essay on Man._

Begirt with love and blessed with contentment, the little family at
Windsor Hall led a life of quiet, unobtrusive happiness. In truth, if
there be a combination of circumstances peculiarly propitious to
happiness, it will be found to cluster around one of those old colonial
plantations, which formed each within itself a little independent
barony. There first was the proprietor, the feudal lord, proud of his
Anglo-Saxon blood, whose ambition was power and personal freedom, and
whose highest idea of wealth was in the possession of the soil he
cultivated. A proud feeling was it, truly, to claim a portion of God's
earth as his own; to stand upon his own land, and looking around, see
his broad acres bounded only by the blue horizon walls,[1] and feel in
its full force the whole truth of the old law maxim, that he owned not
only the surface of the soil, but even to the centre of the earth, and
the zenith of the heavens.[2] There can be but little doubt that the
feelings suggested by such reflections are in the highest degree
favorable to the development of individual freedom, so peculiar to the
Anglo-Saxon race, and so stoutly maintained, especially among an
agricultural people. This respect for the ownership of land is
illustrated by the earliest legislation, which held sacred the title to
the soil even from the grasp of the