Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 26.djvu/72

62 of which will be most fully realized by those to whom, as to Virginians, it has come, "borne," in very deed, "with bier and pall."

Yet in spite of an experience so bitter, true sons of the stricken commonwealth will say of her, as was said of Athens, in language the noble simplicity of which touches and thrills us, even now, through the veil of translation, and after the lapse of more than twenty centuries, with something of the feeling it must have inspired in its hearers, "I affirm that if the future had been apparent to us all * * * nevertheless the State ought not to have deviated from her course, if she had regard to her own honor, the traditions of the past, or the judgment of posterity."

6em Essex County, Va.

"No heroic sacrifice is ever lost; the characters of men are moulded and inspired by what their fathers have done treasured up are all the unconscious influences of good deeds. It was such an influence that led a young Greek to exclaim, two thousand years ago, when he heard the news from Marathon: 'The trophies of Miltiades will not let me sleep!' "

"In hazardous undertakings there is a necessity for extraordinary vigor of mind, and a degree of fortitude and confidence, which shall raise us above the dread of danger, and dispose us to take risks, which the cold maxims of prudence would forbid."

[The excellences of the original essentials of manliness in one who has so notably exemplified them as has Major Courtenay, as defender and sustainer of right, in the fields of war and journalism, and so continuously in historical research and in municipal government give earnest of the privilege of reprinting, in these pages, the