Old Virginia and her neighbours

SOCIETY IN THE OLD DOMINION. 259course. We shall again have occasion to quotehim in the course of our narrative.Among other works by writers reared before theRevolution, the well-known " Notes on Virginia,"by Thomas Jefferson, deserves high praise as anessay in descriptive sociology. Of American poetrybefore the nineteenth century, scarcely a line worthpreserving came from any quarter. In 1777 JamesMcClurg, an eminent physician, afterward a memberof the Federal Convention, wrote his " Bellesof Williamsburg," a specimen ofpleasant societyverse ; but it had not such vogue as its author's" Essay on the Human Bile," which was translatedinto several European languages. Science throvebetter than poetry, and was well repre-, . -,7.. . . 'Science;-r 1 r^^ isented in Vn'gmia by John Clayton, who Joimciaycamethither from England in 1705,being then in his twentieth year, and dwelt thereuntil his death in 1773, on the eve of the famousday which saw the mixing ofBoston harbour.tea with ice-water inClayton was attorney-general ofVirginia, and for fifty years clerk of GloucesterCounty.history of botany ;His name has an honourable place in thehe was member of learned societiesin nearly all the countries of Europe ; andin 1739 his " Flora of Virginia " was edited andpublished by Linnaeus and Gronovius.In Old Virginia, as in all the other colonies,the scientific study and practice of medicine hadscarcely made a beginnino^. Those were1 1 1 ceverywhere the days of " 1 -nkill or curePhysicians.treatment, when there was small hope for patientswho had not enough vitality to withstand both