Taylor's ancestors belonged to
that pious and not less heroic race, which, under the name of
Huguenots, battled, not for rapine and conquest, but for the rights of
conscience and for a large public liberty, and which, though defeated
and driven from their ancestral land, the beautiful land of the fig, the
olive, and the vine, to the chalky shores of old England, were more than
triumphant in the virtue of their cause. The music familiar to the ears
of Tazewell's ancestors was the wind from the boisterous North Sea and
the turbulent Bay of Biscay; while Taylor's forefathers were refreshed
by the gentle gales of Araby blown across the blue Mediterranean to the
banks of the Rhone. The blood of both had been strongly mixed with the
blood of that Anglo-Saxon race, which, crushed at times, and even for
centuries, was apt to rise again, and build its fortresses to freedom
out of the ruins of the very temples of its oppressors.
Tazewell was born on the north side of the James, Taylor on the south--a
distinction of no little significance in Virginia politics to this very
hour.
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