living one, and filled me with a singular exaltation. I think each of us
at some time of his life has felt, as I did then, a desire to suffer for
conscience' sake.

The preachers of Virginia were, as a whole, anything but admirable, a
condition due no doubt to the worldly spirit which pervaded the church on
both sides of the ocean. The average parson was then--and many of them
still are--coarse and rough, as contact with the forests and waste places
of the world will often make men, even godly ones. But many of them were
worse than that, gamblers and drunkards. They hunted the fox across
country with great halloo, mounted on fast horses of their own. They
attended horse-races and cock-fights, almost always with some money on
the outcome, and frequently with a horse or cock entered in the races or
the pittings. And when the sport was over, they would accompany the
planters home to dinner, which ended in a drinking-bout, and it was
seldom the parson who went under the table first. One fought a duel in
the graveyard behind his church,--our own little Westover church, it
was,--and succeeded in pinking his opponent through the breast, for which
he had incontinently to return to England; another stopped the communion
which he was celebrating, and bawled out to his warden, "Here, George,
this bread's not fit for a dog," nor would he go on with the service
until bread more to his liking had been brought; another married a
wealthy widow, though he had already a wife living in England. His bishop
was compelled to recall him, but I never heard that he was discharged
from holy orders. Another on a certain Saturday called a meeting of his
vestry, and when they refused to take some action which he desired,
thrashed them all soundly, and on the next day added insult to injury by
preaching to them from the text, "And I contended with them, and cursed
them, and smote certain of them, and plucked off their hair." I should
like to have seen the faces of the vestrymen while the sermon was in