But suppose this to be a visionary picture. Suppose that yet greater sacrifices shall be found indispensable. What then? Shall we shrink from the making of those sacrifices for the salvation of our native land, the loveliest and the choicest of all lands? Shall we tamely sit still, and see Virginia despoiled of much of her strength by unexampled emigration to other regions, and by this means ripening the more speedily as a harvest for the scythe of the assassin. Shall we, after all that we have seen and heard within nine months past, persist in the slumber and indolence of infatuation? Or shall we soon arise in all our zeal, and all our united strength, to devise and to pursue the measures by which alone such a tremendous issue may be arrested, and our country rendered truly prosperous and happy? How these questions are to be answered by facts, time must discover, and God only, who is omniscient, can certainly foresee. For our part, though we deeply lament that the equally able and eloquent discussion which recently took place on this most important topic in the hall of our legislature was suffered to float away into the air, yielding no practical results; yet we think we ought not to abandon the cause of liberating our beloved country from the abominations and the curse of slavery, in utter despair. A better day may be about to dawn upon us. Perhaps the discussion to which we have referred, itself a wondrous phenomenon in Virginia, may not die away as a fruitless expenditure of feeling and genius. And in the meanwhile, let us continue our labors for the improvement of the Colony, that it may become a more capacious, and in every way convenient receptacle for drawing off, when the good season for the extended operations shall arrive, the pestilential nuisance of our African population. The prominent men of that period associated with Mr. Peyton in this good work were Rev. Conrad Speece, Joseph Cowan, Samuel Clarke, John McCue, George Eskridge, Charles A. Stuart and others. RETIRES FROM THE BAR AND IS ELECTED TO THE SENATE. Mr. Peyton determined some years before he was 60 years of age, to retire from the bar when he reached that time of his life, and did so. After he was sixty he took no new cases, only in one case making an exception to this rule in favor of an old and valued friend, who earnestly implored and begged for his services. He gave them to this friend and lost the case in the circuit superior court of Augusta, but was so well satisfied that the case was erroneously decided that he took an appeal, and after Mr. Peyton's death the decision of the lower court was reversed and thus his client ultimately gained his cause. After he reached the age of 60 he only attended his office and the courts to wind up his business.