The First Annual Meeting of the VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, under its new organization, was held in the Hall of the House of Delegates, on Thursday evening, the 16th ult., and notwithstanding the great inclemency of the weather, was very respectably attended. The President of the Society, the Hon. WM. C. RIVES, of Albemarle, presided; and, on taking the chair, delivered a very appropriate and truly excellent Address, which gave great satisfaction to all who heard it. After this, the Chairman of the Executive Committee, CONWAY ROBINSON, Esq., read the Report of the Proceedings of the Committee during the past year, which showed that they had been most laudably attentive to the duties of their office, and that the Society was already prospering under their counsels. To this the Secretary, Mr. MAXWELL, added a few words, giving some further informationshowing the number of the members of the Society, which he stated to be 252, (besides 15 candidates who would be added to them, he said, at the first meeting,) and submitting a list of books and manuscripts which had been presented and loaned by different persons, to the Society; manifesting a spirit already abroad amongst our citizens that promises the best results. Mr. M. afterwards proceeded to make some remarks upon the object of the Society, the plan of the Committee, and the general scope and spirit of the generous and patriotic cause in which they were engaged; which were manifestly received with lively sympathy and cordial approbation by all present; and which we may hope, accordingly, will not be without some fruit.

Mr. Burwell, of Bedford, then offered resolutions thanking the President for "his eloquent and instructive Address," and the Committee for "their zealous and efficient attention to the in

terests of the Society" during the past year; and directing that the Address, Report, and other Proceedings of the Meeting should be published; which were unanimously adopted.

The Society then proceeded to elect their officers for the ensuing year, and some additional members, (eighteen in number,) and adjourned.

We may now congratulate our fellow-citizens, with great confidence, upon the happy beginning, and, we trust, the permanent establishment of a Society in our metropolis, which certainly promises very fairly to exert a most salutary influence upon all our institutions, and to promote essentially all the best and truest interests of our State and country.

MR. RIVES'S ADDRESS.

GENTLEMEN OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY:

The spirit which has summoned this Society again into activity, after a slumber of several years, is to be regarded, I trust, as one of the omens, and not the least significant, of a better day about to dawn upon our ancient Commonwealth. Too long have we followed after strange Gods, and turned our backs upon those of our own household. The false glare of national honors has been wont to dazzle the eyes of Virginians, and make them forget the duty and service they owe, primarily, to their own State. At last a happy change has arisen, and we see them returning, with gifts and offerings, to their paternal altars.

From this Hall-devised and matured by the enlightened Legislative councils of the State, we have seen, within the present year, a generous system of State improvements go forth, answering to the demands of the age, and the wants of our people, and destined, we may confidently hope, to exert a powerful influence upon the future fortunes of the Commonwealth. A general attention has been awakened every where, to the intellectual wants of the State; and the wisdom of its intelligent citizens and of its Representatives has been conjointly employed, and will, doubtless, continue to be employed, in perfecting a system of public instruction which, with the liberality of its provisions, shall combine a just and practical adaptation to the peculiar circumstances of our situation, in regard to territory and population.

At such a moment of awakened State patriotism, and in con

currence with these noble objects of State concern, it is not to be wondered at that a reviving interest should have been manifested in our State History. To every people, its history-the stirring record of the deeds and trials of its ancestors,-is among the most precious of its possessions; and ours, I trust, is not less fertile in attractions and just motives to cherish and cultivate it, than that of other States. The State which was the first settled of our free Anglo-American confederacy-which in the very infancy of its colonial existence, endowed itself by its own instinctive sagacity and vigour with free Representative Institutions, and thus gave the example to the other colonies, of the only practical security for civil and political freedom-which, by the voice of its little assembly, in the primeval forests of America, enacted from time to time the great canon of British liberty, (immunity from taxes not imposed by the people themselves or their representatives,) in advance of its final establishment by the patriots of the mother country in their memorable struggle with the first Charles*-which founding itself upon this traditional birthright of English and American freemen, thus early proclaimed by its infant voice, was afterwards in maturer age the first to announce a determined resistance to the unconstitutional taxation of the British parliament-which, after sharing so largely in the labours, perils and glorious achievements of the contest for Independence, took an acknowledged and unquestionable lead in the foundation and establishment of our present happy Federal Constitution and Union-a State, whose history is illustrated by such bright and honorable traits and recollections as these, ought surely to feel some degree of interest and pride in her annals.

I do not refer to these things, gentlemen, in the indulgence of

* Among the acts of the Assembly which sat at Jamestown in March 1624, 21st, James I., (the earliest of which any record is now extant) is one declaring, "the Governor shall not lay any taxes or impositions upon the colony, their lands or commodities, otherwise than by the authority of the General Assembly, to be levied and employed as the said Assembly shall appoint." The same principle, in the same words, was thrice re-enacted by the Colonial Assembly in the subsequent reign of Charles 1-to wit, in 1631, 1632, and 1642-3-See Henning's Statutes at Large.

a vainglorious spirit, or to minister to any unworthy feeling of selfcomplacency. Far otherwise. We have been too prone to repose upon the laurels of our ancestors, and to rely on their fame as dispensing us from the necessity of winning a character for ourselves in the world by our own meritorious deeds and exertions. But the very renown of our forefathers serves only to reproach us with our degeneracy, if we do not show ourselves their worthy descendants by the practice of their virtues, and the imitation of their noble examples. It is, then, to draw from them a lesson of useful admonition, a new and powerful incentive to vigorous action in our "day and generation," that I would recur, daily and nightly, to the inspiring records of our past history.

In recalling what Virginia was, we can best form to ourselves a correct idea of what Virginia ought still to be, and the true measure of our own duties as present actors on the stage. We cannot but be painfully sensible of the fact that she no longer holds the proud precedency, not in numbers merely, but in consideration and influence, which she once possessed among the confederated States of the Union. Why is this so? Are not her extraordinary physical advantages the same? Is she not the same "delightsome land" so poetically and rapturously described by Capt. Smith, when entering the bosom of the noble Chesapeake with the first colonists from England? "Within the capes," said he, "is a country that may have the prerogative over the most pleasant places known: Heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitation, were it fully cultivated and inhabited by industrious people. Here are mountains, hills, plains, valleys, rivers and brooks, all running most pleasantly into a fair Bay, compassed, except at its mouth, with fruitful and delightsome land." Such is the picture drawn by one, who had explored the four quarters of the globe, of the rich and beautiful heritage that nature has given us.

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Are not our people the same? Are not the Virginians of the present day of the same generous race with those who laid the foundations of our History, in whom the various elements of Anglo-Saxon power and character were so mixed and blended

as to give assurance to the world of men-a race composed of alternate emigrations from the two great opposing parties, whose giant struggles then convulsed the mother country—a race in whose veins flowed the mingled blood of Cavaliers and Republicans, tempering the zeal of liberty with the love of order, and the virtues of the patriot with the sentiments of the gentleman and the Christian. There is nothing of great achievement, in peace or in war, of which such a race is not capable, when its energies are properly impelled and directed. That the Virginians of the present day have not lost the high capabilities of their race when stirring occasions are presented to call them forth, we might, with excusable pride, point to recent events which have astonished the world by the magnitude of the results, contrasted with the smallness of the means employed in their achievement, and in which Virginians have borne so conspicuous a part, to bear witness. Why, then, has Virginia "fallen from her high estate?" It can only be because the faculties of her sons have not been strenuously exerted in her service and for her advancement. They have been unwisely diverted to other objects, or rusting in unprofitable inaction.

With the high qualities of the Virginian race, it has been generally observed of them that they are somewhat prone to selfindulgence, and not apt to persevere in what they undertake. To make a proper use of the study of our history, we must seek to derive from it a knowledge of our faults, as well as of our excellencies. The great genius of England, in a fragment he left behind him of the early history of his country, tells us most truly and pithily," if it be a high point of wisdom in every private man, much more is it in a nation, to know itself; rather than puffed up with vulgar flatteries and encomiums, for want of selfknowledge, to enterprise rashly and come off miserably in great undertakings."* In tracing our history through successive ages, we shall, perhaps, find reason to conclude that the very bounties of nature with which Providence has surrounded us in a fruitful soil and climate and rivers teeming with abundance, by lessen

* Milton, in his History of England.