And longer than the melancholy life of that wayward statesman,--down even to the beginning of the present civil war, and perhaps to this very moment,--there lingered in Richmond a memorial of those days, most peculiar and most instructive. Before the days of Secession, when the Northern traveller in Virginia, after traversing for weary leagues its miry ways, its desolate fields, and its flowery forests, rode at last into its metropolis,--now slowly expanded into a city of twenty-eight thousand inhabitants,--he was sure to be guided erelong to visit its stately Capitol, modelled by Jefferson, when French minister, from the Maison Carree. Standing before it, he might admire undisturbed the Grecian outline of its exterior, or criticize at will the unsightly cheapness of its stucco imitations; but he found himself forbidden to enter, save by passing an armed and uniformed sentinel at the door-way. No other State of the Union has thus found it necessary in time of profoundest quiet to protect its State-House by a permanent cordon of bayonets; indeed, the Constitution expressly prohibits to any State a standing army, however small. Yet there for sixty years has stood sentinel the "Public Guard" of Virginia, wearing the suicidal motto of that decaying Commonwealth, "_Sic semper Tyrannis_"; and when one asked the origin of the precaution, one learned that it was the lasting memorial of Gabriel's insurrection, the stern heritage of terror bequeathed by his defeat. BETHEL. We mustered at midnight, in darkness we formed, And the whisper went round of a fort to be stormed; But no drum-beat had called us, no trumpet we heard, And no voice of command, but our Colonel's low word,-- "Column! Forward!" And out, through the mist and the murk of the morn, From the beaches of Hampton our barges were borne; And we heard not a sound, save the sweep of the oar, Till the word of our Colonel came up from the shore,-- "Column! Forward!" With hearts bounding bravely, and eyes all alight, As ye dance to soft music, so trod we, that night; Through the aisles of the greenwood, with vines overarched, Tossing dew-drops, like gems, from our feet, as we marched,-- "Column! Forward!" As ye dance with the damsels, to viol and flute, So we skipped from the shadows, and mocked their pursuit; But the soft zephyrs chased us, with scents of the morn, As we passed by the hay-fields and green waving corn,-- "Column! Forward!" For the leaves were all laden with fragrance of June, And the flowers and the foliage with sweets were in tune; And the air was so calm, and the forest so dumb, That we heard our own heart-beats, like taps of a drum,-- "Column! Forward!"