Virginia

“ And then she flew away, her hat hanging by the riband round her neck, and her raven ringlets flying loose around her temples. Virginia sat as one without life or motion, her face deadly pale, and her eye preternaturally clear and glassy, but without a tear. Her respiration was hurried and oppressed, and her countenance expressive of high and noble resolves in the midst of the keenest mental suffering. ”

“ Virginia! The land of legends and lays—the land where the cradle of republican liberty was rocked, and where, in 1765, the first denial was heard of the right of the British Parliament to levy taxes upon the Colonies which kindled the fire of patriotic fervor and led to the ever-living, soul-inspiring words of her Henry and the raising up of her Jefferson to heights of imperishable fame and her Washington to the pinnacle of everlasting renown. ”

“ But Virginia is no more; yet those persons still live, whom, next to yourself, she held most dear; her mother, and your own, whom your inconsolable affliction is bending with sorrow to the grave. Place your happiness, as she did hers, in affording them succour. And why deplore the fate of Virginia? Virginia still exists. There is he assured, a region in which virtue receives its reward. Virginia now is happy. Ah! if, from the abode of angels, she could tell you, as she did when she bid you farewell. 'O, Paul! life is but a trial. I was faithful to the laws of nature, love, and virtue. ”

“ By heavens, Virginia, there shall be no contingency of my making! I have crossed the Rubicon, and you shall have the knowledge as you have had possession of my whole soul from the days of our infancy. 'Tis yours, Virginia, wholly yours; soul, mind and heart, all yours. Mould them as you will, reject me if you must, they are still yours. I swear never to profane the shrine of this first and only love by offering them up on any other. They are offered now, because my destiny so wills it. We are the creatures of circumstances. ”

“ The people of Virginia, if none others, will support its cause. They cannot—no, they will not—they have too much love for the honor of Virginia, to let the 'Messenger' of science and literature suffer for the want of their most liberal patronage. But you are not laboring for Virginia alone: it is for the south—the whole south; and might I not add, for the whole country? For who doubts but that the Messenger is destined to call into active exertion the genius of the south? And who would deny but the south has genius which would do honor to the whole country in any walk? ”

“ Virginia, all unhearing, turns once more toward the columns where the moon again shines through.
Virginia (singing) .
"In the deep dream-light thy bark thou art guiding,
Shifting thy garments, the clouds, as a sail.
Rocked o'er celestial waves thou art riding,
Hiding thy features behind a light veil.
Dian, the spell of thy muteness cast o'er me.
Calm the wild tumult which wars in my brain,
E'er through my life may thine image, before me.
Shining and constant as ever remain." ”

“ Is not a little thing;
Recall the promise of thy strain—
Thou art to "come and sing again!"
THREE NAMES. Virginia in her proud, Colonial days
Boasts three great names which full of glory shine;
Two glitter like the burnished heads of spears,
the third in tender light is half divine.
Turning that page my eager fancy hears
Trumpets and drums, and fleet on fleet appears. ”

“ Virginia
Yes—loyal—with all my heart—to Virginia!
[The trembling little fingers hand the pass back as the tears roll down her cheeks. Lincoln looks away to hide from her his own emotion, stoops and takes her hand in his. His voice is low and tender and full of feeling.] ”

“ For some time past, however, Virginia had felt her heart agitated by new sensations. Her fine blue eyes lost their lustre, her cheek its freshness, and her frame was seized with universal languor. Serenity no longer sat upon her brow, nor smiles played upon her lips. She became suddenly gay without joy, and melancholy without vexation. She fled her innocent sports, her gentle labours, and the society of her beloved family; wandering along the most unfrequented parts of the plantation, and seeking every where that rest which she could no where find. ”

“ Virginia—
We're glad you're back, you should avoid the snows
Dear careless boy; some day you'll freeze your toes.
[Cupid fitting arrow to his bow—]
Virginia—
No, don't you shoot your arrow; 'tisn't fair!
You've learned too much already, spare oh spare
My heart from further pain you cruel boy;
What balm have you for wounds that peace destroy? ”

“ Filled with love of Old Virginia
And the teachings of the free,
May boast in sight of all men
That you followed Robert Lee.
Peace has come. God give his blessing
On the fact and on the name!
The South speaks no invective
And she writes no word of blame;
But we call all men to witness
That we stand up without shame. ”

“ Virginia, come and play with us awhile;
Come, be our queen and on our revels smile.
Or if we may but help you o'er the stream,
Our labours shall a moment's frolic seem.
Virginia—
Kelpies, too long you've roamed on mischief bent:
Too long you've made the sky your nightly tent.
I've oft been warned to shun your careless way
And from your pranks and revels warned to stay.
I dare not try to cross the swollen tide
Unless some stronger arm is close beside.
[Paolo approaches]
Permit my arm to be this guide and stay:
Pray give me leave to help you on your way. ”

“ Virginia, standing now shoulder to shoulder with the man in gray and crimson, had just time to feel a stirring of dislike and perhaps curiosity, when a great cheer arose from thousands of throats. The square rang with a roar of loyal acclamation; men waved tall hats, soft hats, and green peasant hats with [Pg 112] feathers. Beautifully dressed women grouped on the high, decorated balconies waved handkerchiefs or scattered roses from gilded baskets; women in gorgeous costumes from far-off provinces held up half-frightened, half-laughing children ”

“ The Virginians were a proud race, the more jealous of their liberties, having, like the Spartans, the degradation of slavery continually in their view, impatient of restraint, and unwilling to succumb to the control of any superior power, "snuffing the tainted breeze of tyranny afar." ”

“ To Virginia—they are going to Virginia! The sails are made upon the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery. The last wherry carries aboard the last adventurer. The anchors are weighed. Down the river the wind bears the ships toward the sea. Weather turning against them, they taste long delay in the Downs, but at last are forth upon the Atlantic. Hourly the distance grows between London town and the outgoing folk, between English shores and where the surf breaks on the pale Virginian beaches. ”

“ From the terraced banks of the Rappahannock, sixty miles north of Richmond, to the shining reaches of the James, where the capital of the Confederacy stands high on her seven hills, the lowlands of Virginia are clad with luxuriant vegetation. The roads and railways run through endless avenues of stately trees; the shadows of the giant oaks lie far across the rivers, and ridge and ravine are mantled with the unbroken foliage of the primeval forest. ”

“ He said good-by, and marched away northward—northward, northward, always northward—to cold, corpse-strewed Virginia, who cried aloud to us continually, 'More! more!' Her roads are marked with death from her Peaks of Otter to the sea, and her great valley ran red. We went to her from all over the South, from Alabama, Florida, and Georgia, and from our own Carolina. We died there by thousands, and by tens of thousands. O Virginia, our dead lie thick in thy tidewater plains, in thy tangled Wilderness, and along thy river-shores, with faces upturned, and hearts still for ever. ”

“ They had even kept the English character as they had received it, against the touch of time and social revolution, until Virginians seemed like elder Englishmen. England changed, but Virginia did not. There landed estates spread themselves with an ample acreage along the margins of the streams that every- where threaded the virgin woodland; and the planter drew about him a body of dependants who knew no other master; to whom came, in their seclusion, none of that quick air of change that had so stirred in England throughout all her century of revolution. ”

“ Virginia did not sleep at all that night. She was reaching toward her new self. Heretofore she had ruled those about her proudly, secure in her power and influence. Now she saw that all along her influence had in not one jot exceeded that of the winsome girl. She had no real power at all. They went mercilessly on in the grim way of their fathers, dealing justice even-handed according to their own crude conceptions of it, without thought of God or man. ”

“ That is a way people have. Virginia seemed not to be quite of the society which she graced so brilliantly; she seemed to despise it, she passed people swiftly. A queer provocative indifference there was about her.... Take a drawing-room full of people at any hour of night, and watch Virginia there, an ornament in the most brilliant company. Watch now! Watch the pretty lady, the lovely, the remote, the queerly ungracious Virginia! Suddenly, swiftly, silently, she leaves the room. She waits for no man. ”

“ Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. ”

“ Until this call of the President, Virginia had been extremely averse from secession, and even though she deemed it within her rights to leave the Union, she did not wish to pledge herself to join the Confederate States of the South. Virginia was the Virginian's country. The common people were wont to speak of her as "The Old Mother,"—"the mother of us all," a mother so honored and loved that her brood of children must be noble and true. ”

“ The colonization of Virginia was a mammoth undertaking even though launched by a daring and courageous people in an expanding age. The meager knowledge already accumulated was at hand to draw on and England was not without preparation to push for "its place in the sun." There was a growing navy, there was trained leadership, there was capital, there was organization and there were men ready to make the gamble for themselves and to the glory of God and for their country. ”

“ This sentiment all true men everywhere must appreciate and honour. But the soil of Virginia is now, and henceforth will be, held sacred in the hearts of all true Southern men and women, because she has been baptized in the blood and has received into her bosom the remains of thousands upon thousands of the truest and noblest sons of the entire Confederacy. ”

“ As the conditions of life grew easier, the Virginians, with the true instinct of frontiersmen, described America as God's country, abounding in every good thing: "Seldom any that hath continued in Virginia any time will or do desire to live in England, but put back with what expedition they can." ”

“ As our nation's history unfolds, issues of state, national and international scope will continue to face the Commonwealth. The history of Virginia has furnished Virginians with a proud heritage, an appreciation for the noble deeds of the past and an understanding of the courage and wisdom required to solve successfully current and future problems. ”

“ A long interval of tranquillity had enervated the planters of Virginia: luxury had introduced effeminate manners and dissolute habits. "To eat and drink delicately and freely; to feast, and dance, and riot; to pamper cocks and horses; to observe the anxious, important, interesting event, which of two horses can run fastest, or which of two cocks can flutter and spur most dexterously; these are the grand affairs that almost engross the attention of some of our great men. And little low-lived sinners imitate them to the utmost of their power. ”

“ He bows his head upon Virginia's shoulder.
Appius. He faints with sudden revelation from
The gods of what is manifestly true.
Virginius, thou art deluded, or
A man, of old, deceptive.
Virginia. 'Tis a lie!
He is Virginius, no more, no less!
And 'tis enough, as Rome can witness to.
Thou art not worthy to crawl on the ground
And kiss the hand which hath these many years
Battled for Rome! Thou canst but harm our flesh. ”

“ The Virginia gentleman, wherever met, was a country gentleman or a lawyer among a society of planters. The absence of city life was the sharpest character­istic of Virginia, even compared with South Carolina. In the best and greatest of Virginians, the virtues which always stood in most prominence were those of the field and farm,—the simple and straightforward mind, the notions of courage and truth, the absence of mercantile sharpness and quickness, the rusticity and open-handed hospitality, which could exist only where the struggle for life was hardly a struggle at all. ”

“ Yet, even though there was such rout and revel at Williamsburg and kindred towns, it was in the houses of the great planters that one saw the true Virginia social existence, that one found the Virginia woman of the time in her truest apparition. Under the influences of the coming of the Cavaliers and the Huguenots--for the descendants of the latter perpetuated the restless gaiety of their forsaken land rather than the austerities of the faith which had been the cause of their exile--there had arisen in Virginia something of a cult of the social function. ”