Professor M. C. Tyler[663] speaks of the commissary, James Blair, as “the creator of the healthiest and most extensive intellectual influence that was felt in the Southern colonies before the Revolution.” This influence was chiefly felt in the fruition of his efforts to found the College of William and Mary.[664] _The Present State of Virginia and the College, by Messieurs Hartwell, Blair and Chilton_ (London, 1727), contains an account, in which Blair, in Tyler’s opinion, had the chief hand. Blair’s relations to the college have had special treatment in Foote’s _Sketches of Virginia_ (ch. ix.); in Bishop Meade’s _Old Churches and Families of Virginia_ (vol. i. art. xii.); and in the _Hist. of the American Episcopal Church_ (vol. i. ch. 7), by Bishop Perry, who gives two long letters from Blair to the governor of Virginia, after the originals preserved at Fulham Palace. Additional material is garnered by Perry in his _Historical Collections of the Amer. Colonial Church_, which includes a large mass of Blair’s correspondence.[665] [Illustration] [Illustration: WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE. After the picture given in Meade’s _Old Churches_, etc., i. 157. Cf. Perry’s _Amer. Episc. Church_, i. 123; Gay’s _Pop. Hist. U. S._, iii. 60. The original building was burned in 1705. The next building, which by scarcity of funds was long in erecting, was not completed till 1723. The above cut is of this second building. In _Scribner’s Monthly_, Nov., 1875, are views of the building before and after rebuilding in 1859.] While Francis Makemie was entering the lists in the interest of “cohabitation,” gaining thereby not much respect from the tide-water great-estate owners, and printing in London (1705) his _Plain and friendly perswasive to the inhabitants of Virginia and Maryland for promoting towns and cohabitation_, setting forth the loss to virtue by the dispersal of sympathizers in religion, Robert Beverley was publishing anonymously in London (1705) his _History and Present State of Virginia, in four parts_. 1. _The History of the First Settlement of Virginia, and the Government thereof, to the present time._ 2. _The Natural Productions and Conveniences of the Country, suited to Trade and Improvement._ 3. _The Native Indians, their Religion, Laws, and Customs, in War and Peace._ 4. _The Present State of the Country, as to the Polity of the Government, and the Improvements of the Land_,[666] which, as will be seen in the last section of the title, particularly sets forth the condition of the colony at that time, offering some foundation for Mackemie’s arguments.[667] [Illustration]