Knoxville Whig and chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1875-1882, 1875-06-30
SENSIBLE WORDS.

The Norfolk DiJgintdn reads the
Old Dominion lecture that will APP.
ply to other Southern States, Tennes.
see among them:
Virginia has long been near to be de-
stroyed with the dry rot of conceit, a most
narrow and provincial and local conceit.
The war brought us somewhat out of it by
teaching us that there are other brave men,
good soldiers, devoted patriots, beside us
of Virginia. Not soldier Of us but
learned to respec, the Louisiana brigades
and their reckless rush, none but praised
the superb soldiership of the Texans, none
but loved the steady untiring troops of
North Carolina none but rejoiced in the
spirit of the soldiers Maryland sent us.
We learned, too, to respect the
men of the North, and in all directions our
knowledge was widened, and our conceit
shrank or changed into its nobler form of
self-respect and self-reliance. But since
the war we tend to fall back to the old
modes of thought, Of our contemporaries
once buried we have made ancestors and
demigods, aud we narrow our pantheon
down to Virginias dimensions.
Pride of race and Of country is noble and
great, and no man. least of all Virginian,
denies it, But it should bring forth other
fruit than idle self-praise, show itself by
other proof than contempt Of our neigh
bors, and ignorant, false estimate Of our
selves. We call the Yankee. mean
and his thrift knalery; yet where among
ourselves is the spirit which north of US
has covered the land with libraries and
public halls, with colleges and museums,
with hospitals and observatories and pub
lie parks? Again, we grid at
the shallow knowledge of the Northern
people. Yet where arc our historians,
poets, scholars, chroniclers, where are our
historical societies? The truth is that we
do not compare ourselves rightly with our
neighbors. The credit side Of the bal
ance in make up is fully written out; the
debt side we leave blank and call the err
ror virtue. OF ali the many good
deeds done, and all the noble lives lived in
Virginia, we are in danger to forget few,
nor to fail in the memory of a past that
was often glorious, but Virginia Of to day
has Il lesson to learns lesson she has
known. She has to cultivate that public
spirit once at the root of her greatness,
once hard by the fountain of her fame the
public spirit of Washington, creating the
canal, projecting the water way through
the great Dismal, and founding Washington
College the public spirit of Madison, la
boring to erect on the shores of Chesapeake
great Virginia port Of Giles, abandoning
his seat at Washington to sit in the Capitol
of Virginia; of Jefferson, finding time in
the midst of thousand labors to invent
new forms of the plough, to import the rice
plant and the tomato, to write his Notes on
Virginia, which still, alas remains alone,
and to found that great University which
was the darling of his age and shall be the
monument of his fame
This is plain talk and to the point.
We may talk till doomsday about our
past history, but however honorable
it may have been it profits US nothing
now. We live in an age Of progress.
None but the active, persevering. and
industrious. We want to spend more
of our time at the South in develop.
ing the resources which nature has
placed within our reach to make us
prosperous and happy. The State
that repines over its own poverty
as compared with Massachusetts, is
not on the highway to prosperity by
any means. Let us resolve that we
will improve our advantages, and we
will have no cause to envy the pros.