--From an admirable sermon preached in
Savannah, Ga, by
Bishop Elliott, of the Episcopal Church, we take the following eloquent extract:
‘
Peace, with its soft eye and radiant wing, has not come to us, but victory has ! Victory under circumstances most glorious and unexpected — not only on the land, but upon the sea. Her angel has planted one foot on the earth and the other on the ocean, and with his sword of vengeance has smitten this insulting and vainglorious nation.
And what a noble spirit has he infused into the heart of our Confederacy!
How it has warmed anew into fervor
Virginia, that old mother of heroes and of statesmen.
Under the shadow of the
Federal Government she seemed to be sinking into the slumber of death, as one dies under the shade of the poisonous Upas tree.
But at the war cry of her children, "
Sic Sempre Tyrannic," how her rich blood has rushed back upon her heart, and startled her into life.
The sound of freedom's cry has disenchanted her, and she has sprung full-armed into the arena.
Her noble acts have gathered around her from her hills and from her valleys, from all her fields of historic fame, from the blue waters of the
Chesapeake to the dark, rushing torrent of the
Kanawha — sons worthy of such a mother.--All her old energy has come back to her. All her power of self-denial and self-sacrifice has revived within her. Proud, fearless, endow!
table, she looks into the very eye of tyranny, and makes it quail before her majesty of right and truth!
The mother of States, she bares her bosom to receive upon it the strokes which are aimed at her children.
Hurling defiance in the teeth of the oppressors, she prepares herself to conquer or to die. She hopes, she prays, she struggles for victory, but knowing that everything is dependent upon her bold stand, she fearlessly takes it.
’
