has modelled his narrative, dividing the periods into what he calls the Plantation, the Colony, and the Commonwealth,—the second more than covering the years now under consideration. He places first among his authorities for this period _The Statutes at Large, being a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia_, by William Walter Hening, in thirteen volumes, as the most important authority on social affairs in Virginia. He speaks of its unattractive title failing to suggest the character of the work, and says, with perhaps an excess of zeal, that “as a picture of colonial time, it has no rival in American books.” [Illustration] The institutional history of Virginia has of late received some particular attention at the hands of Mr. Edward Ingle, who printed in the _Mag. of Amer. History_ (Dec., 1884, p. 532) a paper on “County Government in Virginia,” which he has reprinted with other papers on the Land Tenure, the Hundreds, the English Parish in America, and the Town, in a contribution called _Local Institutions of Virginia_, which makes parts ii. and iii. of the third series (1885) of the _Johns Hopkins University Studies in History and Political Science_.[678] We are fortunate in possessing the official correspondence of the two most notable royal governors of the eighteenth century. The letters of Alexander Spotswood were used by Bancroft, and were then lost sight of till they were recovered in England in 1873.[679] They are now published in two volumes (Richmond, 1882, 1885) as _The official letters of Alexander Spotswood, lieutenant-governor of Virginia, 1710-1722; now first printed from the manuscript in the collections of the Virginia Historical Society, with an introduction and notes by R. A. Brock_, constituting the initial volumes of a new series of the _Collections_ of the Virginia Historical Society. Spotswood’s official account of his conflict with the burgesses is printed in the _Virginia Hist. Register_; and we best see him as a man in William Byrd’s “Progress to the Mines,” included in Wynne’s edition of the _Byrd Manuscripts_. Palmer draws Spotswood’s character in the introduction to his _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, p. xxxix.[680] Of the other collection of letters, _The official records of Robert Dinwiddie, lieutenant-governor of Virginia, 1751-1758; now first printed from the manuscript in the collections of the Virginia Historical Society, with an introduction and notes by R. A. Brock_, Richmond, Va., 1883-84, being vols iii. and iv. of the new series of the same _Collections_, a more special account is given in another place.[681]