Hopkins University; to Mrs. S. L. Gouverneur (for a letter to Mason among the Monroe papers in her possession); to Mrs. Swann, née Alexander, of Alexandria, Va.; and to J. A. Weston, London, England; as also to the late Hon. Lyman C. Draper, of Wisconsin, for a copy of his valuable essay on the Autograph Collections of America. And she would acknowledge her indebtedness for ever ready assistance and courtesy, to the librarians of the Historical and Peabody Libraries of Baltimore, the State Library of Richmond, Virginia, and the Congressional Library in Washington.

LIST OF PERSONS FROM WHOM THE AUTHOR HAS RECEIVED COPIES OF GEORGE MASON'S LETTERS.

William R. Mercer, Doylestown, Penn.; Jeremiah Colburn, Boston, Mass.; William Wirt Henry, Richmond, Va.; Dr. John S. H. Fogg, Boston; Charles Roberts, Philadelphia; Simon Gratz, Philadelphia; the late Dr. Robert C. Davis, Philadelphia; Charles C. Jones, Augusta, Georgia, Cassius F. Lee, Jr., Alexandria, Va.; Justin Winsor, Harvard University (from the Lee papers, Cambridge); James M. Garnett, University of Virginia (from the Lee papers, U. of V.); Mrs. John R. Joyner, Berlin, Maryland (a descendant of Richard Henry Lee, who presented the author with an autograph letter); D. McN. Stauffer, New York; W. D. Hixson, Maysville, Kentucky (copy of a land warrant); the late Joseph Horner, Warrenton, Virginia; J. B. Moore, of the New York Historical Society (Lamb papers); Charles P. Greenough, Boston; the late Benson J. Lossing, Dover Plains, New York; F. J. Dreer, Philadelphia; John M. Hale, Phillipsburg, Penn.; John Boyd Thacher, Albany, N. Y.; Stan. V. Henkels, of the firm of Thomas Birch's Sons, Philadelphia; Walter R. Benjamin, New York (from whom an autograph letter was received); Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, New York; Fisher Howe, Jr., Boston; the collection of the late Professor Leffingwell, New Haven, Conn., lately dispersed by auction in Boston; and the collection of the late Conway Robinson, now in possession of the Virginia Historical Society.

BIBLIOGRAPHY-GEORGE MASON.

MAGAZINE ARTICLES.

'George Mason, of Virginia," by Judge Bland.—Niles' Principles and Acts of the Revolution, Baltimore, 1822.

"George Mason, of Virginia," by John Esten Cooke.-New York Century (weekly paper), 1859.

"Gunston Hall," by J. Esten Cooke.—Appleton's Journal, April 4, 1874. "A Statesman of the Colonial Era," by General Richard Taylor.—North American Review, February, 1879.

"The Virginia Declaration of Independence-A Group of Virginia Statesmen," by J. E. Cooke.—Magazine of American History, May, 1884.

"George Mason," by Mason Graham Ellzey, M.D.-Southern Bivouac, August and September, 1885.

"The Mount Vernon Convention."-The Penna. Magazine of History and Biography, January, 1888.

"Gunston Hall, Virginia."-The Home-Maker, April, 1890.

Brief biographical sketches are found in Hugh Blair Grigsby's "Convention of 1776."

'Garland's Life of John Randolph," chap. 8, p. 35.

Mrs. Mary Lamb's "Homes of America" (which contains a view of “ Gunston

Hall").

Appleton's "Cyclopedia of American Biography."

ETC., ETC.

LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF

GEORGE MASON, OF VIRGINIA.

CHAPTER I.

ENGLISH AND VIRGINIAN ANCESTRY.

In September, 1651, the last battle of the English Civil War was fought and lost by the young Charles II., whose father had perished on the scaffold three years previously. The cavaliers, in their desperate fortunes, turned their faces, many of them, to Virginia, the far-off, faithful Dominion across the Atlantic. And as early as 1649, the year of the king's execution, one ship alone, we are told, brought over three hundred and thirty of his followers.' Many Virginia families trace their beginning in the New World to this period of the cavalier immigration. The ancestors of Washington, Madison, Monroe, Pendleton (and Jefferson on the maternal side) were among these royalist refugees. And such is the tradition concerning Col. George Mason, the great-grandfather of George Mason of Gunston, the revolutionary patriot. According to the account preserved in the family, Colonel Mason commanded a troop of horse at the battle of Worcester, and escaping from this fatal field disguised himself and was concealed by some peasants until an opportunity offered for him to embark to America.' A younger brother is said to have accompanied him to Vir

'Virginia,” American Commonwealth Series, J. Esten Cooke, p. 192. Copy of old paper of 1793, by George Mason of "Lexington."