in the mass rather than to the letter of the law fitted him for political life. He was soon to have his opportunity; in the meantime he awoke in Jefferson a revolt against clerical usurpations that was to bear its fruit in time. Usually passed over by Jefferson's biographers, the plea made by Patrick Henry in the "parson's case" seems to have been the incident that called the young man's attention to the position occupied by the established Church in its relations to the civil power. It started in him the train of thought that culminated in the "Bill for religious freedom." It has been sometimes said that Jefferson used to spend fourteen hours a day in study when he was at Williamsburg; his correspondence with John Page shows him in a very different light. He was not in any sense a bookworm, even though he read enormously, but he played as strenuously as he studied. A good horseman, a good violin player, a good dancer, he was a much-sought-after young man. He had a keen eye for the ladies, and very early in 1762 he had fallen in love with Miss Rebecca Burwell, the _Bell-in-day, Belinda, campana in die, Adnileb_ of his letters to Page. The young lady had given him her profile cut in black paper which he carried in his watch case. Far from her, life lost all interest: "all things appear to me to trudge in one and the same round: we rise in the morning that we may eat breakfast, dinner and supper, and to go to bed again, that we may get up the next morning and do the same, so that you never saw two peas more alike than our yesterday and to-day." He had in mind to go back to Williamsburg, to propose, receive his sentence and be no longer in suspense: "but reason says, if you go, and your attempts prove unsuccessful, you will be ten times more wretched than ever."[9] Spring, then summer came, and he could not muster up enough courage to declare himself. Madly in love as he was, he was not intending to marry at once. He had formed great plans for traveling. He was dreaming of hoisting his sail and visiting England, Holland, France, Spain, Italy (where I would buy me a good fiddle), and Egypt, and return home through the British provinces to the northward. This would take him two or three years. Was it fair to ask Belinda to wait so long for him? And yet he could not leave without speaking and remain in suspense and cruel uncertainty during the whole trip. "If I am to meet with a disappointment, the sooner I know it, the more of life I shall have to wear if off ... If Belinda will not accept of my service, it will never be offered to another. That she may I pray most sincerely: but that she will, she never gave me reason to hope."[10]