Selections From the Miscellaneous Writings of Dr. George W. Bagby (Volume 1) - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1884. Excerpt: ... THE OLD VIRGINIA GENTLEMAN. PEEFACE. This lecture was written in the interest of the Virginia Historical Society. My hope was that its delivery throughout the State might awaken in our people a just pride in their Past, which, with all its faults, has had no equal since Greece gave to the world that splendor which will live when the sun dies. That pride aroused, I hoped they would, by small individual contributions, revivify a society representing the history of the oldest and greatest of American States. Doubtless the picture here drawn of Virginia as she was is idealized. Purposely so. Not for a moment could any Virginian say that there was nothing amiss in the old order. Alas! there is much amiss in every struature, old or new. Educated at the North, I was perhaps more keenly alive to the defects of our system than almost any Virginian of my time. And so long as the good Commonwealth lived I did not fail to mix in every panegyric I wrote--and there were several--a full proportion of good-natured satire. If I have praised Virginia without stint, I have, in times past, ridiculed her unsparingly. But our Mother is dead, and much may be pardoned in a eulogy which would be inexcusable were the subject living. I ask no man's pardon for what must seem to a stranger a most exaggerated estimate of my State and its people. In simple truth and beyond question there was in our Virginia country life a beauty, a simplicity, a purity, an uprightness, a cordial and lavish hospitality, warmth and grace which shine in the lens of memory with a charm that passes all language at my command. It is gone with the social structure that gave it birth, and were I great, I would embalm it in the amber of such prose and verse as has not been written since John Milton laid down hi...