Excerpt from The Virginia Historical Reporter, Vol. 2: Conducted by the Executive Committee of the Virginia Historical Society Without impropriety I may congratulate you on the re-union of this evening. It must be gratifying to every liberal mind to witness and assist in each successive repetition of these annual celebrations, in which so much of the aspiring talent, of the matured intelligence, of the active energy, and of the acknowledged culture of the Ancient Dominion of Virginia, is brought together by the attraction derived from the com mon memories of the past, and is melted into harmony by the animation springing from the common hopes of the future. You meet for the purpose of retrieving or reviving the dim and obliterated traditions of the earlier day; of commemora ting the achievements in Council and in battle-field, -in pub lic service and in private enterprise, by which, in the short space of two centuries and a half, the little company, which attended Newport, and Gosnold, and Smith to the shores of the Chesapeake, has expanded into the great, the intelligent, the wealthy, and the well-peopled State of Virginia; and has been multiplied by continual accretions from without, and by vigorous internal development, into a vast and powerful con federation of free, sovereign and independent States, spread ing across the wide continent from ocean to ocean, and from the reign of Northern frost to the realm of tropical heat and luxuriance. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.