Those  pretty  girls  of  the  Apollo,  who  turned  young  Jefferson's  head
in  1762,  and  most  of  the  other  bright  spirits  of  that  generation,  —
where  does  their  dust  repose  ?  In  cemeteries  so  densely  covered
with  trees  and  tangled  shrubbery,  that  no  traces  of  their  tombstones
can  be  discovered ;  in  cemeteries  over  which  the  plough  and  the  har-
row pass ;  in  cemeteries  through  the  walls  of  which  some  stream
has  broken,  and  where  the  bones  and  skulls  of  the  dead  may  be
seen  afloat  upon  the  slime.
The  suddenness  of  the  collapse  was  most  remarkable.  Westmore-
land County,  the  birthplace  of  Washington,  Madison,  Monroe,  and
Marshall,  called  absurdly  enough  "  the  Athens  of  Virginia,"  was
still  the  most  polite  and  wealthy  region  of  Virginia  when  Thomas
Jefferson  was  a  young  lawyer.     In  thirty  years  it  became  waste  and


LAWYERS  IN  OLD  VIEGINLA..  79

desolate.  A  picket-guard  in  1813,  posted  on  the  Potomac  to  watch
for  the  expected  British  fleet,  were  seeking  one  day  a  place  to
encamp,  when  they  came  upon  an  old  church,  the  condition  of  which
reyealed  at  once  the  completeness  and  the  recentness  of  the  ruin.
