But no

Time cannot teach forgetfulness

When grief's full heart is fed by fame.

Here, in this battle-crowned capital of our ancient Commonwealth, shall "the men who wore the gray" yearly gather and recall the names of those who went forth to battle at the bidding of Virginia-who now lie sleeping on the bosom of this mother, that not unmindful of their valor, not ungrateful for this filial devotion, shall keep forever bright the splendor of their deeds, "till earth, and seas, and skies are rended."

No "Painted Porch" is hers, like that of Athens, where, for half a thousand years, the descendants of the men who had followed Miltiades to victory might trace the glories of their Marathon; no gleaming Chapelle des Invalides, with the light flaming through gorgeous windows on tattered flags of battle; no grand historic Abbey, like that of England, where, hard by the last resting place of her princes and her kings, sleep the great soldiers who have writ glorious names high upon their country's roll with the point of their stainless swords.

Nay, none of this is hers.

Only the frosty stars to-night keep solemn watch and ward above the wind-swept graves of those, who, from Potomac to James, from Rapidan to Appomattox, yielded up their lives that they might transmit to their children the heritage of their fathers.

Weep on, Virginia, weep these lives given to thy cause in vain;
The stalwart sons who ne'er shall heed thy trumpet-call again;
The homes whose light is quenched for aye; the graves without a stone;
The folded flag, the broken sword, the hope forever flown.

Yet raise thy head, fair land! thy dead died bravely for the right;
The folded flag is stainless still, the broken sword is bright;

No blot is on thy record found, no treason soils thy fame,
Nor can disaster ever dim the lustre of thy name.*

Pondering in her heart all their deeds and words, Virginia calls us, her surviving sons, "from weak regrets and womanish laments to the contemplation of their virtues," bidding us, in the noble words of Tacitus,† to "honor them not so much with transitory praises as with our reverence, and, if our powers permit us, with our emulation."

Reminding her children, who were faithful to her in war, that "the reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another," she points to the tasks left unfinished when the "nerveless hands drooped

These lines are slightly altered from the noble poem entitled "The Ninth of April, 1865," by Percy Greg-Interleaves in the Work Day Prose of Twenty Yeurs-London, 1875. † Agri., chapter xlvi.

over the spotless shields," and with imperious love claims a fealty no less devoted in these days of peace.

I claim no vision of seer or prophet, yet I fancy that even now I descry the faint dawn of that day which thousands wait on with expectant eyes; when all this land-still the fairest on the globe— this land which has known so long what old Isaiah termed the "dimness of anguish❞—shall grow glad again in the broad sunlight of prosperity, and from Alleghany to Chesapeake shall resound the hum and stir of busy life; when yonder noble roadstead, where our iron-clad "Virginia" revolutionized the naval tactics of two continents, shall be whitened by many a foreign sail, and you, her children, shall tunnel those grand and hoary mountains, whose every pass Lee and "old Stonewall" have made forever historic by matchless skill and daring. Thus, comrades, assured of her heroic past, stirred by a great hope for her future, may we to-night re-echo the cry of Richmond on Bosworth field:

"Now civil wounds are stopped, peace lives again;
That she may long live here, God say amen!"

The following officers were elected:

President-General W. H. F. LEE.

Vice-Presidents-General Robert Ransom, General Harry Heth, General A. L. Long, General William Terry and Captain D. B. McCorkle.

Treasurer-Major Robert Stiles.

Secretaries-Sergeants George L. Christian and Leroy S. Ed

wards.

Executive Committee-General B. T. Johnson, Colonel Thomas. H. Carter, Major T. A. Brander, Major W. K. Martin, Private Carlton McCarthy.

THE BANQUET.

After the exercises in the capitol, the Association and their invited guests assembled at a splendid banquet spread in the spacious dining room of the Saint Claire Hotel.

In response to toasts, eloquent and thrilling speeches were made by General T. M. Logan, Captain James Lamb, Judge F. R. Farrar, Private C. McCarthy, Captain J. H. Chamberlayne, General Fitz. Lee, Dr. R. T. Coleman, Dr. J. S. D. Cullen, Rev. Alexander Weddell, Major John W. Daniel, General B. T. Johnson, and others.

SEVENTH ANNUAL REUNION.

A splendid audience assembled in the State Capitol on the evening of the 1st of November, 1877.

Rev. Dr. John E. Edwards opened the exercises with a fervent and appropriate prayer, after which the President, General W. H. F. Lee, made a brief but eloquent address, and introduced Leigh Robinson, Esq., of Washington, who had served as a gallant private in the Richmond Howitzers, and had been chosen as the orator of the evening.

Mr. Robinson was enthusiastically greeted, and frequently applauded as he delivered the following address:

ADDRESS OF PRIVATE LEIGH ROBINSON.*

I.

Fellow Soldiers-I will not detain you by the expression of the pride with which I received, and the sense of the honor to myself with which I accepted, the invitation to address you. From either feeling excessive vanity alone could save me. But it is of more consequence, just at present, both to you and to myself, to show my appreciation of the compliment by at least my own endeavor to discharge, as best I may, the duty it imposes the duty at all times difficult, at all times delicate, of recounting, with due sensibility and without undue eagerness, honorable exploit with which, however humbly, we feel ourselves identified.

There is a reply of some celebrity from a Spartan to a rhetorician, who proposed to pronounce an eulogium on Hercules. "On Hercules," said the Spartan, "who ever thought of blaming Hercules?" And certainly man's valor, the hero's fear of evils greater than death and temporal disaster, by virtue of which he is man, and has virtue, as it does not require apology, on the one hand, not unbecomingly, perhaps, may dispense with eulogy on the other. Charles V said: "How many languages one knows, so many times he is a man." How, then, are we to reckon the polyglot Mezzofanti, who carried the tongues, not of all literatures merely, but well-nigh of all articulate sound, in his head,

NOTE BY THE COMPILER.-Mr. Robinson omitted in the delivery about half of this address, but the Association asked the whole for publication.

speaking one hundred and fourteen languages in all, yet leaving no memorable word in one? The tongue of fire, by which language is not only uttered but informed, and made itself a vital spark, was not among his members. How shall we compare this wonder of all tongues with Latour d'Avergne, "the first grenadier of France," for whose death, while repulsing the front rank of a charge of imperial cavalry, a whole army wore mourning; to whose memory the republican General Desrolles erected a monument on the spot where he fell, which, "consecrated to virtue and courage, and put under the protection of the brave of every age and country," received that protection from the enemy he resisted, and remained in a foreign land to the honor alike of the friend who raised and the foe who respected it? Here was, if not an audible, then, at least, a visible speech; the flame image of a hero, appealing to all races and all ranks, from the chariot and horses of fire by which he ascends to the skies. To fall on the field of battle, with the ties of some common cause of manhood behind, and in front the spears of some "proud Edward's power," is to live forever in the muster of the faithful; and in all ages, and to all nations, has seemed a sweet and honorable thing. In the front rank of duty, to opppose the odds of number and of fate, is man's highest act of faith, and not once, but always, is put under the protection of the brave of every age and country. The brave are one kindred; from age to age they are a sacred band. They are the true immortals. Theirs is the first of all gifts-the gift to quit themselves like men. By how many times a man has greatly dared and overcome, or in unequal battle overborne, fought stoutly to the last, by so many times he is a man. Properly, then, it may be asked, who ever thought of blaming such?

But if, in the comparatively trivial business of cooking a hare, first to catch him, according to the recipe of Mrs. Glass, is essential to success, surely, in the paramount matter of a Hercules, we must do as much before we undertake to serve him up with or without the sauces. Even Hercules has counterfeits, and here, more than in any other prime necessity of life, the genuine article is indispensable. Once put beyond controversy the facts of your prowess, and I agree with the Spartan, that panegyric belongs to the supererogatory works. But clearly, it is of the last importance to have and to hold the facts.

Such a suggestion, reasonable at all times, can at no time be more certainly judicious than when the struggle to be recorded is the expression of the whole faculty and character of a people; stands forth as the most vivid image of what brains and sinew, and conscience, had arrived at in their case; and, being such,

must more and more be accepted as the most infallible measure, which does or can exist, of whatever virtue or whatever want of virtue did dwell in them. The sum total of all which the past has done for them, of all which they have achieved and become in the past, in such case is comprehended and depicts itself in one supreme exhibition. History thus concentrates and reveals itself in figures drawn to the life.

Such a trial of arms, so commensurate with the whole tone and tension, settled light and shadow of the South, as to have received their image and superscription and be their revelation, has been transacted in our day and generation, by us and those we represent. That lantern in the vessel's stern, shining only on the waves that are behind, which all experience has been likened to that lantern is our civil war. By all means let all heroic facts be collected and protected. Let the truth with all sim

plicity, if need be with all severity, be told.

An association, then, pledged to find out and true answer make to the question, how was it that, with such disparity of force, environed, blockaded, beleaguered by the world-the very medicine-chest interdicted-how was it the unprovided South waged such a contest; more especially, how did that portion of it known, once and forever, as Army of Northern Virginia, not only endure the toils of war, but again and again carry off its honors, from greatly superior numbers and munitions?-such an association. can hardly be overestimated by a people jealous of their honor. It must tell the story of valor which was ineffectual, of fortitude which seems fallacious; of a cause to which the rich gave of their abundance and the poor of their penury; in whose behalf honorable eminence and honest poverty were willing to exceed the measure of exaction, "hoping all things, believing all things." It must tell how a whole people arose with one emotion and conviction; how, in a desperate game, the South played her rose nobles, if not against, then, at least, with as free a hand as if they were so many crooked half-pennies; how victory to the South was as exhaustive as defeat, and defeat to the North answered the purposes of victory; how the life of the South waned as her glory waxed; how she graved her faith on her escutcheon; how her sons bore the ark of her strength, like a plume of victory, from Bethel to Gettysburg; how they clenched in their long death-grip, from the Wilderness to Appomattox, and how at the last, and to the last, a remnant which róse above the carnage of war, the ruin of homes, the cry of distress, still gathered around a chieftain's form with the self-immolation of despair. All this it must tell, and truly; if need be, severely tell.

Surely it is now high time to admit that, with such object in