ious prosperity, and no pickling in the sharp acids of adversity,
can destroy it. It is a part of the Virginia character--just as the
flavor is a distinctive part of the oyster--"which cannot, save by
annihilating, die." It is no use talking about it--the thing may be
right, or wrong;--like Falstaff's victims at Gadshill, it is past
praying for: it is a sort of cocoa grass that has got into the soil,
and has so matted over it, and so _fibred_ through it, as to have
become a part of it; at least there is no telling which is the grass
and which the soil; and certainly it is useless labor to try to root
it out. You may destroy the soil, but you can't root out the grass.

Patriotism with the Virginian is a noun personal. It is the Virginian
himself and something over. He loves Virginia _per se_ and _propter
se_: he loves her for herself and for himself--because _she is_
Virginia, and--everything else beside. He loves to talk about her: out
of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. It makes no odds
where he goes, he carries Virginia with him; not in the entirety
always--but the little spot he comes from is Virginia--as Swedenborg
says the smallest part of the brain is an abridgment of all of it.
"_Coelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt_," was made for a
Virginian. He never gets acclimated elsewhere; he never loses
citizenship to the old Home. The right of expatriation is a pure
abstraction to him. He may breathe in Alabama, but he lives in
Virginia. His treasure is there and his heart also. If he looks at the
Delta of the Mississippi, it reminds him of James River "low grounds;"
if he sees the vast prairies of Texas, it is a memorial of the meadows
of the Valley. Richmond is the centre of attraction, the _depot_ of
all that is grand, great, good, and glorious. "It is the Kentucky of a
place," which the preacher described Heaven to be to the Kentucky
congregation.

Those who came many years ago from the borough towns, especially from
the vicinity of Williamsburg, exceed, in attachment to their
birthplace, if possible, the _emigres_ from the metropolis. It is
refreshing in these coster monger times, to hear them speak of
it;--they remember it when the old burg was the seat of fashion,
taste, refinement, hospitality, wealth, wit, and all social graces:
when genius threw its spell over the public assemblages and illumined
the halls of justice, and when beauty brightened the social hour with
her unmatched and m