Despite the perils and perplexities of the time; the irreverence and profanity of the clergy; the solemn warning of the missionary Presbyterians; the death of good Queen Anne, the last of the Stuarts, so dear to the hearts of loyal Virginians; the forebodings on the accession to the throne of the untried Guelphs; the total lack of many of the comforts and conveniences of life, Virginians love to write of the early years of the century as "the golden age of Virginia." These were the days known as the "good old times in old Virginia," when men managed to live without telegraphs, railways, and electric lights. "It was a happy era!" says Esten Cooke. "Care seemed to keep away and stand out of its sunshine. There was a great deal to enjoy. Social intercourse was on the most friendly footing. The plantation house was the scene of a round of enjoyments. The planter in his manor house, surrounded by his family and retainers, was a feudal patriarch ruling everybody; drank wholesome wine--sherry or canary--of his own importation; entertained every one; held great festivities at Christmas, with huge log fires in the great fireplaces, around which the family clan gathered. It was the life of the family, not of the world, and produced that intense attachment for the soil which has become proverbial. Everybody was happy! Life was not rapid, but it was satisfactory. The portraits of the time show us faces without those lines which care furrows in the faces of the men of to-day. That old society succeeded in working out the problem of living happily to an extent which we find few examples of to-day." "The Virginians of 1720," according to Henry Randall, "lived in baronial splendor; their spacious grounds were bravely ornamented; their tables were loaded with plate and with the luxuries of the old and new world; they travelled in state, their coaches dragged by six horses driven by three postilions. When the Virginia gentleman went forth with his household his cavalcade consisted of the mounted white males of the family, the coach and six lumbering through the sands, and a retinue of mounted servants and led horses bringing up the rear. In their general tone of character the aristocracy of Virginia resembled the landed gentry of the mother country. Numbers of them were highly educated and accomplished by foreign study and travel. As a class they were intelligent, polished in manners, high toned, and hospitable, sturdy in their loyalty and in their adherence to the national church."