pinnacle of everlasting renown.

Virginia! The land of battlefields and battle gore, colonial relics and
Revolutionary monuments, spotless fame and unsullied honor; the land of
patriot soldiers and heroes, and of a Yorktown, where the tyrant's head
was bruised and the glorious strife ended which struck from our fathers
the fetters and gave to them and their posterity a country gleaming in
the golden sunlight of republican liberty, and throwing wide open her
gates to the oppressed of every clime.

Virginia! The land of mountains, upon whose summits and in whose gorges
the spirit of freedom roams unfettered and unconquerable; the land of
valleys, which are hung like alcoved aisles with scenes of heroism and
pictures of daring, self-sacrifice, and devotion to principle; the land
of rivers and rivulets, which reflect like mirrors the fields upon which
her blood has been poured out like water upon the ground; the land of
zephyrs and breezes, and where the storm king sometimes dwells, gently
murmuring or in thunder tones proclaiming her glories and her fame; the
land of blue beautiful skies, radiant with the virtues of her daughters
and bespangled with the deeds of her sons; the land of memorials of the
past, that inspire the Virginia youth, whether born in poverty or in
riches, reared in the cottage humble or in the mansion stately, with a
patriotism that knows not section and yet a State love that knows not
bounds.

It was in this land that Richard Henry Lee, the fire and splendor of
whose eloquence burned like a hot iron into the soul of tyranny, and
Francis Lightfoot Lee, both of them signers of the Declaration of
Independence, were born; it was in this land that Arthur Lee, through
whose instrumentality the Colonies secured the friendship and support of