"I drew a bill for our [Virginia] Legislature, which proposed to lay off every county into hundreds, or townships, of five or six miles square. In the centre of each of them was to be a free English School [to be supported, as his bill provided, "by taxation according to property."] The whole Commonwealth was further laid off into ten districts, in each of which was to be a college for teaching the languages, geography, surveying, and other useful things of that grade, and then a single University for the sciences. It was received with enthusiasm (he goes on to say), but as he had proposed to make the Episcopal College of William and Mary the University, "the dissenters after a while began to apprehend some secret design," etc.--_Ten-Brook's American State Universities_, pages 9, 10. A writer in the _North American Review_ for October, 1875, in referring to Jefferson's scheme, says:-- "The view entertained by Jefferson was by no means exceptional. Indeed, a similar spirit had pervaded the whole history of our Colonial life."--Page 379. Thus this comprehensive scheme of public instruction for Virginia unfortunately failed; and that noble "Old Dominion" is in consequence to-day immeasurably behind even the youngest of her then New England contemporaries in the matter of public education. As to the abiding influence of the old Colonial ideas in regard to higher education, we quote the following additional remarks from Mr. Gilman, in the _North American Review_, he says:-- "In reviewing the history of the century, it is easy to see how the colonial notions of college organization have affected ... the higher education of the country, even down to our own times. The graduates of the older colleges have migrated to the Western States, and have transplanted with them the college germs ... and every Western State can bear witness to the zeal for learning which has been manifested within its borders by enthusiastic teachers from the East."--Page 217. Mr. Ten-Brook, in his _American State Universities_, also says:-- "The New England colonists left the mother country in quest of greater religious freedom. Their religious system was put first, and carried with it a school system as perfect in organization, and administered with equal vigor. This formed an active leaven, which, at a later day, was to spread to other parts.... Everywhere there was a considerable infusion of men who had received in the European universities a liberal culture, which they desired to reproduce on those shores. Early action was full of promise. Probably, at a period from just before the Revolution to the end of it, the average position of the colonies in regard to lighter education relatively as to age, and to the population and wealth, was quite as good as it is at the present time."--Pages 16, 17.