=Rise of the Common School in Virginia.=--By the opening of the period, as we noted (p. 193), Virginia had voluntarily made a fair provision for secondary and higher education in various localities, but as yet no real interest in common elementary schools had been shown by the responsible classes. The nearest approach to such institutions was found in the plantation ‘field school.’ Organized by a group of neighbors, these schools were supported by tuition fees and were not dependent upon any authority other than the good sense of the parents and pupils. But by the close of the Revolution a desire for genuine public education began to appear. The leader in the movement was the great statesman, Thomas Jefferson. As early as 1779, he first introduced into the legislature a scheme of universal education. His bill proposed to lay off all the counties into small districts five or six miles square, to be called ‘hundreds.’ Each hundred was to establish at its own expense an elementary school, to which every citizen should be entitled to send his children free for three years, and for as much longer as he would pay. The leading pupil in each school was to be selected annually by a school visitor and sent to one of the twenty ‘grammar’ (i. e. secondary) schools, which were to be erected in various parts of the state. After a trial of two years had been made of these boys, the leader in each grammar school was to be selected and given a complete secondary course of six years, and the rest dismissed. At the end of this six-year course, the lower half of the geniuses thus determined were to be retained as teachers in the grammar schools, while the upper half were to be supported from the public treasury for three years at the College of William and Mary, which was to be greatly expanded in control and scope. [Sidenote: Permissive law and ‘literary fund.’] [Sidenote: University of Virginia.]