he passed the crowning years of his spotless career; where he was born, he died and is buried; where Patrick Henry roamed and mused until the hour struck for him to rouse, with invincible eloquence, the instinct of free citizenship; where Marshall drilled his yeoman for battle, and disciplined his judicial mind by study; where Jefferson wrote his political philosophy and notes of a naturalist; where Burr was tried, Clay was born, Wirt pleaded, Nat Turner instigated the Southampton massacre, Lord Fairfax hunted, and John Brown was hung, Randolph bitterly jested, and Pocahontas won a holy fame--there treason reared its hydra head and profaned the consecrated soil with vulgar insults and savage cruelty; there was the last battle scene of the Revolution and the first of the Civil War; there is Mount Vernon, Monticello, and Yorktown, and there also are Manassas, Bull Run, and Fredericksburg; there is the old graveyard of Jamestown and the modern Golgotha of Fair Oaks; there is the noblest tribute art has reared to Washington, and the most loathsome prisons wherein despotism wreaked vengeance on patriotism; and on that soil countless martyrs have offered up their lives for the national existence, whose birth-pangs Virginia's peerless son shared, and over whose nascent being he kept such holy and intrepid vigil, bequeathing it as the most solemn of human trusts to those nearest to his local fame, by whom, with factious and fierce scorn, it has been infamously betrayed on its own hallowed ground; whose best renown shall yet be that it is the scene, not only of Freedom's sacrifice, but of her most pure and permanent triumph. SHE DEFINES HER POSITION. Lingering late in garden talk, My friend and I, in the prime of June. The long tree-shadows across the walk Hinted the waning afternoon; The bird-songs died in twitterings brief; The clover was folding, leaf on leaf. Fairest season of all the year, And fairest of years in all my time; Earth is so sweet, and heaven so near, Sure life itself must be just at prime. Soft flower-faces that crowd our way, Have you no word for us to-day? Each in its nature stands arrayed: Heliotropes to drink the sun; Violet-shadows to haunt the shade; Poppies, by every wind undone; Lilies, just over-proud for grace; Pansies, that laugh in every face. Great bloused Peonies, half adoze; Mimulus, wild in change and freak; Dainty flesh of the China Rose, Tender and fine as a fairy's cheek; (I watched him finger the folds apart To get at the blush in its inmost heart.) Lo, at our feet what small blue eyes! And still, as we looked, their numbers came Like shy stars out of the evening skies, When the east is gray, and the west is flame. --'Gather yourself, and give to me, Those Forget-me-nots,' said he.