antiquated style of English. These works were published in Aristopia, of course in the reformed spelling and grammar, and a copy of each was given to every school library. Learning this language in their school-books, the children adopted it as their own, and there gradually grew up an Aristopian language which may he described as a perfected English.
While the colony of Aristopia was thus advancing with giant strides (but so quietly as to attract little public attention in England), the colony of Virginia still crawled feebly along with its "strange miracles of misery." There was not a single village or hamlet in the colony except Jamestown, and that was smaller after twenty years than it was two years after it was founded. Each family lived isolated, every planter a petty lordling with his black slaves (for negro slavery had been introduced) and white indentured servants, the latter hardly less slaves than the former. Indeed, the laws of both Virginia and Maryland made it punishable with death for one of these white servants to run away, a crime described with grim quaintness as a "theft of himself." Many friendless persons, especially orphan boys old enough to do considerable work, were kid-
