the rich and the reckless tendencies and traits of the country; and became thus a central point and a representative State--which destiny seems foreshadowed by her physical resources and her local situation. Except New England, no portion of our country has been more fully and faithfully illustrated as to its scenery, domestic life, and social traits, by popular literature, than Virginia. The original affinity of her colonial life with the ancestral traditions of England, found apt expression in Spenser's dedication of his peerless allegory to Elizabeth, wherein the baptism of her remote territory, in honor of her virginal fame, was recognized. The first purely literary work achieved within her borders was that of a classical scholar, foreshadowing the long dependence of her educated men upon the university culture of Great Britain; and those once admired sketches of scenery and character which gave to William Wirt, in his youth, the prestige of an elegant writer, found there both subjects and inspiration; while the American school of eloquence traces its early germs to the bar and legislature of the Old Dominion, where the Revolutionary appeals of Patrick Henry gave it a classic fame. The most prolific and kindhearted of English novelists, when he had made himself a home among us and looked round for a desirable theme on which to exercise his facile art, chose the Southampton Massacre as the nucleus for a graphic story of family life and negro character. The 'Swallow Barn' of Kennedy is a genuine and genial picture of that life in its peaceful and prosperous phase, which will conserve the salient traits thereof for posterity, and already has acquired a fresh significance from the contrast its pleasing and naive details afford to the tragic and troublous times which have since almost obliterated the traces of all that is characteristic, secure, and serene. The physical resources and amenities of the State were recorded with zest and intelligence by Jefferson before Clinton had performed a like service for New York, or Flint for the West, or any of the numerous scholars and writers of the Eastern States for New England. The very fallacy whereon treason based her machinations and the process whereby the poison of Secession was introduced into the nation's life-blood, found exposition in the insidious fiction of a Virginian--Mr. George Tucker--secretly printed years ago, and lately brought into renewed prominence by the rebellion. 'Our Cousin Veronica,' a graceful and authentic family history, from the pen of an accomplished lady akin to the people and familiar with their life, adds another vivid and suggestive delineation thereof to the memorable illustrations by Wirt, Kennedy, and James; while a score of young writers have, in verse and prose, made the early colonial and the modern plantation and waterplace life of the Old Dominion, its historical romance and social and scenic features, familiar and endeared; so that the annals and the aspects of