Moses Waddel-Judge Longstreet’s Eulogy on Dr. (Moses) Waddel 1841 Longstreet, Augustus Baldwin. Eulogy of the Life and Public Services of the Late Rev. Moses Waddel, D.D., Delivered in the College Chapel, on the Third Day of August, 1841. Augusta: Chronicle and Sentinel Office, 1841.

This is the sole sum Longstreet's Eulogy Please return to John Henry Waddell Athens Geo. JUDGE LONGSTREET'S EULOGY ON DR. WADDEL. EULOGY ON THE LIFE AND PUBLIC SERVICES OF THE LATE REV. MOSES WADDEL, D.D., FORMERLY PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA DELIVERED IN THE COLLEGE CHAPEL ON THE THIRD DAY OF AUGUST, 1841, BEFORE HIS PUPILS AND THE SOCIETY OF THE ALUMNI BY HON. A.B. LONGSTREET AUGUSTA PUBLISHED AT THE CHRONICLE AND SENTINEL OFFICE MDCCCXLI ATHENS, 3d August, 1841. SIR: THE undersigned have been appointed a Committee, by the pupils of the late Dr. WADDEL, and the Alumni of Franklin College, to request, for publication, a copy of the Eulogy pronounced by you this day, before them, on his life and public services. This course is considered alike due to the author and subject of the Address; and its publication will, in some degree, enable others to participate in the pleasure enjoyed by those who witnessed its delivery, and now make this request. In the hope that you will yield a ready compliances with our wishes, we are, sir, most respectfully yours, C.J. JENKINS, JOHN D. WATKINS, } Committee. C. DOUGHERTY, To Hon. A.B. LONGSTREET. ATHENS, 5th August, 1841. GENTLEMEN: WITH my thanks for the complimentary manner in which you have spoken of my Address upon the life and character of the late Dr. MOSES WADDEL, I herewith transmit it to you for publication. Yours, very respectfully, A.B. LONGSTREET. C.J. JENKINS, JOHN D. WATKINS, } Committee C. DOUGHERTY, BEFORE reading the Address, the reader will make the following corrections: Page 13, 14th line from bottom, for "when," read "who." Page 14, 12th line from top, for "desert," read "disgrace." Page 14, 19th line from bottom, for "four," read "five." Page 16, last line, for "some," read "none." Page 17, last line, for "vices," read "virus." There are several other typographical mistakes, which the reader will readily correct from the sense. EULOGY. --------- I AM not insensible, fellow citizens, of the honor which you have conferred upon me, in selecting me as your organ upon this solemnly interesting occasion; nor am I so much elated by it, as to forget the diminutiveness of my intellectual stature, when compared with many of the number from whom you have made your choice. I am constrained to believe that you have chosen your representative by a fallacious standard you have mistaken his profound respect and steadfast devotion to our deceased friend, for the requisite abilities to portray, in appropriate colors, the life and character of that friend. A better standard would have led you to a far better choice, and saved you the disappointment to which you are now exposed. It is a melancholy reflection, that a meeting, for which we who wear the badge of discipleship to the REV. DR. WADDEL, have a thousand times sighed, should have been reserved for this moment, when the heart cannot feel gladness, and for this spot, where repose the ashes of him whose presence is indispensable to its enjoyment. It is his best eulogy, that when the cords of friendship, woven in friendship's most propitious hour, could not draw us together, we spontaneously convene in reverential pilgrimage at his grave. Nor come we with light and careless hearts to wreath garlands round his urn, or in pompous ceremony to emblazon his name; but we come to offer the heart's richest oblation, at the shrine of our country's benefactor, and our own best friend. We confess, that in our passage through the stormy sea of life, we have been sometimes jostled rudely against each other, and that we have indulged the feelings natural to such collisions. But if they were not dissipated with the storms which awaked them, they retired, unbidden, as we approached the hallow precincts of our instructor's tomb. Upon the sanctity of the present service they cannot obtrude. We cannot assemble in the hall where he delivered his last lessons we cannot look upon the desk in which he performed his holy ministrations, 6 without reviving the tender regards for each other which used to be associated with such scenes. They return not to us, to be sure, as they were of old, buoyant, cheerful and gay, but in a gloomy procession of melancholy images, which all-changing, unsparing Time has blended with them. Youth's dreams, ambition's folly, life's delusions, fortune's freaks, blighted hopes, severed ties, buried friends, and hearing death, all come thronging to the mind, with the tender emotions of by-gone days, chill the warm grasp which friendship prompts, and suffuse the smile of our greeting with a tear. Never were so many, and of such rank, seen mingling their regrets at a preceptor's tomb; and yet we are but the lorn wreck of the thousands whom DR. WADDEL taught. Where are the elder members of the brotherhood those born to the patriarch at his first encampment in Greene? Overwhelmed by Time's ever-rolling flood. Not one survives to recount the deeply interesting history of his sojourn there. None to tell of the marvelous transformation which his character underwent during the term of their pupilage. None to tell how, from a Sabbath-day's services at Old Bethany, their young and lightsome tutor returned to them, subdued, depressed and spiritless how he wandered, in gloomy abstraction, through the deep shades of Ogeechee's woodlands, seeking they knew not what, but finding always tears How he at length dismissed them, and wandered far away, to pour the story of his soul's exercises into the ear of some good old Presbyterian ANANIAS How he returned, and, after a season, resumed his school with a joy more steady than they had ever observed in him before, and with a serenity undisturbed, save by a little thoughtfullness and uneasiness at the hours of opening and closing his school How these interruptions ceased, when after a storm in which was gathered all that is appalling in tempests, he rose before his pupils and said "We have been preserved, this evening, from great danger we ought to thank God for his kindness therefore, let us pray!" With the last words of this sentence, he opened and closed his school for more than forty years afterwards. How strange it seems to us, who knew him only as a strong pillar of the Church, that MOSES WADDEL should have ever felt it a cross to pray before a group of rustic youths! Where are the CRAWFORDS, the COBBS, the SIMPKINSES, the APPLINGS, songs of his second encampment in Columbia? Gone with their country's honors upon them wafted to their haven 7 of rest by their country's sighs. They mingle not in the services of the day, but they performed better services whilst they lived, they did honor to their literary father, of which he was conscious, and which will endure, as long as the records of Congress and the annals of American battles remain. They have hallowed the spot where he first met them, and first led them to the pathway of fame. It was then as beautiful and romantic, as majestic oaks, and woodland flowers and cane-belted streams could make it. It has lost all its native adornments, but it has assumed a face and vesture, more congenial to the feelings which it now inspires. Sterility has smitten it, the streams wind round it through wasted lands, dwarf pines overcanopy it, and while they shed a ceaseless twilight upon it, they sigh to every breeze, the dirge of its own departed delights, and the requiem of the spirits that consecrated it. Where are the NOBLES, the MARTINS of Willington? Gone with titled names, down to the chambers of silence, universally regretted, and universally beloved. And where the less known, but not less gifted, BULLS, SHIELDSES, WALKERS and MARSHALLS? Bright sons of promise, they rose when they sought elevation, or fell in manhood's first aspirations; but they are now no more. These were cotemporaries of the speaker, and of some of his hearers. They bring the scenes of Willington vividly before us, and memory loves to linger among them, spiritless and dull as they may seem to those whose happiness was never interwoven with them. The miniature village of Student's architecture in its woodland cloister is full before me. There stands the double-chambered old capitol of rude material, looking gravely down the little street on the one hand, and over a lovely streamlet, winding through a beautiful beech-covered plain on the other. From the brow of the gentle eminence on which stands the venerable old pile, a shrub-embowered path descends, to a bold gushing fountain at its foot. The nodules around are crowned with huts, studies, dormitories, dwellings, and in the dells between, are artificial bowers and hermitages of shelving rock. It is recreation's hour, and the street, better called the arena, is noisy with sports. In various exercises and pastimes is Carolinian and Georgian rivalry seen in spirited, but friendly contest would that it had been buried there, or that it had brought its spirit away with it! Some wander in social rambles through the grove many ply their 8 studies forgetful of the respite some loll fatigued by the fountain while others in pensive mood, steal away to the concert of brook and birds, and register their names on the gray beeches which overshadow and sustain the choristers. In that little community, young, gay, healthful and happy, I reocgnize some who are now before me, the fathers of the age. To those who have realized the fondest hopes of youth's sunny hour, how different the scenes through which they have past, as seen in prospect then, and in retrospect now! What we would not give to live over again a single day of the time to which I have referred. But alas, could we recall our youth, and re-assemble our lost and scattered companions, Willington is not the spot on which we could live that day. It would oppress us with gloom, rather than enliven us with joy. A silent church now occupies the noisy play-groundthe little hamlet is entirely swept away, no vestige of path or spring remains the hoary old chroniclers are goneand the beautiful rivulet that laved their feet, now darkly flows through an artificial channel, bordered on either side with a treacherous morass, over which the bittern stalks, in solitary rule. And where are the juniors of the brotherhood, who but a little while ago occupied these seats! So recently have they fallen, that we may not dwell upon them, lest we tear open afresh insufferable wounds which are scarcely cicatricedcut down in the bloom of youth, and in the bud of promise! One conspiring sigh from affection's most hallowed chamberone commingled tear from friendship's most sacred fountain, to all, all the departed of the brotherhood, who slumber with its common head! How forcibly does this retrospect, bring to mind the words of the poet: "Friend after friend departs Who has not lost a friend? There is no union here of hearts, Which finds not here an end. Were this frail world our only rest, Living or dying none were blessed. Beyond the flight of time, Beyond the vale of death, There surely is some blessed clime Where life is not a breath, Nore life's affections transient fire, Whose sparks fly upward to expire." "We go where they are gone, No human power can save, Life's fleeting race is quickly run, Its goal is in the grave, And thence the still tongued dead declare, Ye living men, prepare, prepare." 9 We return from this digression, if indeed that can be called a digression, which stands in such close connexion with the life of our deceased friend, and which leads us so naturally to contemplate the loveliest traits of his character. On the 25th of January, 1767, a vessel destined for Georgia, but baffled by adverse winds and weather, put into the port of Charleston, having on board, WILLIAM WADDEL, his wife, and five female children. He had emigrated from the vicinity of Belfast, in Ireland, where he left interred, a daughter and an only son. He remained but a short time in Charleston, before he removed to Rowan, (now Iredel) County, in North Carolina, and settled on the waters of the South Yadkin river. Here, on the 29th July, 1770, was MOSES WADDEL born. He was the last of three sons born on the same spot. John, the eldest, still lives in vigorous old age, after having numbered more than three score years and ten. Samuel, the second, died in infancy. So confident were his parents that Moses would not survive his birth a single day, that when they found themselves mistaken, they gave him the name of the patriarch who was Providentially preserved in his infancy. In May, 1777, he entered as a half scholar, in a school about three miles from his father's residence. At his tender age, it was believed that he would not be able to attend school more than half the year; and this proved true. In the May following, he left this school, having received at it in all, about six months' instruction. In this time he learned to read accurately, and to write a fair hand. His proficiency here, which was unequalled by any child of his age in the school, opened the way to all his subsequent usefulness. In 1778, by the instrumentality of the Rev. JAMES HALL, a Presbyterian Divine, a grammer school was established in the neighborhood, and Mr. WADDEL's friends besought him to enter his son Moses, in the Latin department. The old man objected, upon the very reasonable ground that he was not able to purchase the books, much less to endure the more heavy expenses of such a course of study. He at length, however, yielded to the importunities of his friends; casting himself on Providence for the means. On the 27th or 28th of October, 1778, the school was opened, under the name of Clio's Nursery; and MOSES WADDEL in a class with our much esteemed friend and fellow citizen, the late Dr. JAMES NISBET and four others, commenced 10. the study of the Latin grammer. In rather more than a year afterwards, Mr. JAMES MCEVEN, the preceptor, died, and in November, 1779, Clio's Nursery was committed to the care of Mr. FRANCIS CUMMINS, then a student of Theology, and afterwards a distinguished Divine, well known throughout the two Carolinas and Georgia. The favors which Mr. WADDEL received at his hands, he afterwards returned with interest to many of his grand children. By reason of an incursion of the British forces into the neighborhood, and the subsequent events of the Revolutionary war, the school suspended from May, 1780, to April, 1782; when it was recommenced under the direction of Mr. JOHN NEWTON, who was succeeded by Mr. SAMUEL YOUNG. With these two, MOSES WADDEL prosecuted his studies for about two years; and in the spring of 1784, having finished the study of the Latin and Greek languages, Euclid's Elements, Geography, Moral Philosophy and Criticism, he bade adieu to Clio's Nursery. And here, except for a few months employed in learning arithmetic, closed his Academic education. About this time, application was made to the Rev. Dr. HALL, for the best linguist that had been taught at Clio's Nursery, to supply a vacant tutorship, in the Camden Academy, and MOSES WADDEL, who had but just completed his fourteenth year, was by this grave Divine recommended as a suitable person to fill the place; but his father, in consideration of his youth, and the temptations to which a city life would expose him, positively refused to let him accept the appointment. Considering the necessitous circumstances of both the father and the son, and the strong appeal that was here made to the father's pride, he exhibited a triumph of parental affection over personal interest, which reflects the highest credit upon his heart and understanding. His son never ceased to feel grateful for it, as long as he lived. On the 15th of October, 1784, when just entering upon his fifteenth year, he took charge of a school, his first, about fifteen miles from his father's residence. It consisted of about twenty pupils in English, and six or seven in Latin and was kept at a stated salary of $70 per annum. Here was the beginning of his labors in that field from which he reaped so much renown, and for his services in which he afterwards received thousands per annum. 11 At this place, near the waters of Hunting Creek, in what is now Iredel County, and its vicinity, he continued to teach, giving general satisfaction to his employers, until the latter part of the year 1786; when he removed to Greene county, in the state of Georgia. In January following, he established a school, composed mostly of English scholars, with one or two in Latin. This, his first establishment in Georgia, was near the North Ogechee river. In the summer of 1787, a threatened invasion of the Creeks, forced him to break up his school, and being now out of employment, he visited his parents in North Carolina, who determined to accompany him to Georgia. He preceded them however, about a month; and on his return, found that the Indian alarms had been but too well founded. The Creeks had invaded the white settlements, burnt Greenesborough, and committed several murders, still farther to the eastward. Mr. WADDEL found his old patrons and friends had abandoned their houses, and taken refuge in forts. He now went to Augusta, and after having spent nearly a month in an ineffectual attempt to procure a place in the Richmond Academy, he returned to Greene, where he found quiet restored, and his parents just arrived from North Carolina. In 1788, he opened another school in the neighborhood of his first in this state; and while engaged in its duties in this year, he (at Bethany, then a missionary station under the North Carolina Presbytery,) received those religious impressions of which I have already spoken. It is a curious fact that, to find an experienced religious friend with whom he might commune upon the state of his feelings, he had to travel several miles beyond Washington, in Wilkes County. Thanks to the God of reform, a sweep around old Bethany now, with a radius of ten miles, would embrace a hundred such. Mr. WADDEL now determined to enter the Ministry, and preparatory thereto, to obtain a collegiate education. In the fall of the year 1790, he set out, by the advice of the Rev. JOHN SPRINGER, for Hampden Sidney College. He arrived there in September, and after employing himself in preparatory studies until the third of January following, he entered the Senior Class in that Institution. On the 29th September, 1791, he graduated; after remaining in College but eight months and twenty-six days. In the meantime having presented himself to the Hanover Presbytery, of Virginia, as a candidate for the Ministry, and having undergone the usual examinations 12 examinations and trials, he was licenced to preach on the 12th of May, 1792. After remaining awhile in Virginia, he returned to the South and resided in the family of Mr. THOMAS LEGARE, of South Carolina. In 1793 or 1794, he opened a school in Columbia County, Georgia, about two miles to the eastward of the village of Appling. After teaching here for several years, he removed to the village, where he continued his usual labors for a short time, prior to his removal to South Carolina. In 1795, he married Miss CATHERINE CALHOUN, daughter of PATRICK CALHOUN, of South Carolina, and sister of the Hon. JOHN C. CALHOUN. She survived the marriage but about a year. In 1800, he married Miss ELIZABETH WOODSON PLEASANTS, a native of Powhatan, but then a resident of Halifax County, Virginia. Four sons and two daughters were the offspring of this marriage, all of whom are in life, and of whom we may not say more in the presence of some of them, than they are not unworthy of their sire. In 1801, he left Columbia, and opened a school in Vienna, Abbeville District, South Carolina. Here he remained until 1804, when he removed to Willington, a country seat of his own establishment, about six miles south of Vienna. The degree of Dr. of Divinity was conferred on him by Columbia College, South Carolina, in 1807. He remained at Willington until May, 1819, when having in the previous year been elected President of the University of Georgia, he entered upon the duties of this office. The effect of his coming to this Institution was magical. It rose instantly to a rank which it had never held before, and which I am happy to add it has maintained ever since Esto perpetua. He resigned his place in it in August, 1829, and in the February following, returned to Willington. Here closed his preceptorial labors of forty-five years. He continued his ministerial labor, six or seven years longer. In September, 1836, he was visited with a stroke of the palsey, which he survived nearly four years, but his mind went rapidly to ruin under the blow. In January, 1839, he was removed to the residence of his son, Professor WADDEL, in this place; where he closed his pre-eminently useful life, on the 21st July, 1840. 13 The reputation of Dr. WADDEL never suffered from change of times, place, or society, but bright at his rising, it grew brighter and broader at every move in his orbit. This is as wonderful as the precocity of his genuis, and the more wonderful considering the precocity of his genuis; for if there be any occupation in which merit is no guaranty of popularity, it is that of an instructor of youth if there be any thing in which age never confirms the views of the youth, it is in the direction and government of a school. For very many years past, it would have been a self-reproach in any one to question his merits as a teacher. A few short words from the book of truth, would have put such an one to the blush "by their fruits ye shall know them." The fruits of his vineyard are scattered far and wide through the most of the Southern States, and long have they been seen in rich luxuriance in the Capitol of the Union. Content himself to move through life in humility's vale, with only the mellow radiance of the censer's light: he ever and anon, touched off a rocket that shot gloriously aloft, and glared and sparkled to the enraptured gaze of the nation at large. One of his pupils reached the second post in the gift of the people of the United States, and for many years were two of them the favorites of a vast number of that people for the first. It is not too much to say, that there were times when they might have obtained it; the time will never come when unbiased history will record that it was above their deserts. For thirty years he has not been without some Ajax in the field of political warfare, where all the champions of the States convene; when whatever we may have thought or said of his tactics, we all felt proud to acknowledge as a Southron, and prouder still to recognize as a fellow-disciple. Not one only, but many, have battled it on the same field, with honor to their country and to themselves; and however they may have differed in other respects, they all had the same watchword, and the same armorials. To them all, the most beautiful emblazonry on their country's banner, was the Constellation of distinct, separate and equal stars. They regarded it with something of a Sabean devotion, because they saw in it the guaranty of their States' independence, and the pledge of their fireside joys. They therefore resisted, with becoming spirit and sensitiveness, every attempt to bedim or eclipse those stars, by expanding the glory which encircles the Eagle's crest. Like their preceptor's allies, they 14 have been denounced as selfish bigots and fanatics; but we must cease to understand the language of our country's heraldry, before we can believe it. Often have they triumphed in argument, when overpowered by numbers, and often have their adversaries like Caesar with Pompey, after crushing their power, done honor to their heads. Posts of honor and profit in this and the neighboring States, are so common to Dr. WADDEL's pupils, that they might almost be considered their legitimate heritage. It would be hard to name the place of rank, which they have not occupied. Nor have I ever heard of one, certainly I have never known one to [*disgrace*] desert his post. Were I to name those who have done honor to their high places, I should exhibit in this assembly, what should have been often seen, but which is hardly ever seen Carolinian and Georgian pride inspired, and Carolinian and Georgian delicacy offended by the same remarks. Search the army and navy rolls, and there, too, you will find Dr. WADDEL's pupils, invariably distinguished, where they have had an opportunity of distinguishing themselves, and where they have not, invariably respected. But one sacred relic has Georgia, of which her State House is the shrine, and the Governor the vigil. It is the sword of Dr. WADDEL's pupil. Four [*five*] counties in this State bear the names of his disciples, and there is hardly a State in the Union, which has had territory to settle, since the year 1812, which has not a village or a county bearing the name of Crawford or Calhoun. There is hardly a College between the Catawba and the Sabine, in whose faculty he has not a representative hardly a literary institution of which his pupils are not the efficient guardians and patrons. The best literary periodical ever published in the United States, (I speak on foreign testimony) was edited in part and chiefly, by one of his pupils. While one corps has been thus reaping laurels in all earth's places, another, unambitious of wreaths so fading, have been in ardent and hopeful pursuit of the palm of deathless verdure, which their preceptor now triumphantly bears. Those too, have been distinguished in their sphere. They never ceased to be his disciples. He was bounded to them by a double tie, tender beyond earth's conceiving. From a teacher, he became to them a father, whose counsels fell on them like the dews of Hermon. They 15 loved to gather near the old cedar of Lebanon, and breathe the celestial fragrance which it exhaled on the atmosphere around it. And when they say it half withered by the blight which Heaven sent upon it, none looked on it with the painful intensity of interest which they felt. With what rapture will they behold it transplanted in the Paradise above, flourishing in immortal vigor. Such are the fruits of Dr. WADDEL's labors, as a teacher. We may not say that his pupils owed their distinction entirely to him. We do not say that they derived the largest store of their mental endowments from him; but we believe that without the impulse which he gave to their talents, many of them who rose to high rank, would never have been heard of. The remarkable distinction of his pupils, cannot fairly be ascribed to chance. The immense number whom he taught, amounting to nearly four thousand, accounts in part, for the number who rose to distinction; but upon what principle are we to account for the number whom he taught? The question naturally presents itself, here where lay the secret of his success over others of equal abilities. I should say in his sleepless vigilance over the conduct and morals of his scholars; the equity and impartiality of his discipline, and his firmness in enforcing it his ready insight into the character of youth, and his skill in improving it, either by prompt correction or speedy commendation as seemed to him best; and in his well regulated familiarity with them, which made him at all times accessible to them, without lessening their respect for him. The consequence of this system of government, was that his pupils, with few exceptions, both loved and feared him. To all which, it may be added, that when left to choose, he almost invariably established his school in some retired spot, which, while it brought his pupils night and day under his immediate supervision, removed them almost entirely from the temptations of vice. Certain it is that he had the faculty of developing the native powers of the youthful mind, in a higher degree than any man I ever knew. It is very remarkable, that he rarely, if ever, corrected a student, for deficiency in recitation. While I was with him and I was with him longer than most of his pupils I do not remember a single instance in which he did so. To be "turned off" as it was called, that is, to be required to re-commit a lesson, was considered such a disgrace by all the students, that he never found it necessary to apply any other corrective to this delinquency. 16 He was himself a very severe student, and a very industrious man. He rose with the dawn in Summer, and before it in the Winter. As a Christian, Dr. WADDEL's character was unexceptionable. He was not without the Christian's trials, and these, for some years after he embraced the cross, were uncommonly severe; but as the surges that break over the coral reef, only add brilliancy to its native beauty, so these trials, but added lustre to "the beauty of his holiness." His piety burned with a steady flame. It was subject to no violent transitions, but it brightened with his locks, as all will perceive, who read the brief record which he made in his latter years, of his daily transactions. It was obviously kept as a mere private remembrancer of his daily secular matters, and yet its monthly entries often close with heartfelt aspirations for a deeper work of grace upon his heart. He was active and constant in the discharge of his ministerial duties, and he shrunk from no labor which his ecclesiastical relations imposed upon him. His discourses were always grave, solemn and practical, possessing few of the ornaments of style, but occasionally enlivened by flashes of true eloquence. He was generous, hospitable and kind, and while he dispensed many charities, which the world must needs know; I doubt not but that he dispensed many which will not be known, until his Master saith to him "for as much as ye did it unto one of the least of these my disciples, ye did it unto me." As a husband, he faithfully performed all the obligations of the marriage vow more than this could no husband do. As a father, he was as kind and as indulgent, as his bible would permit him to be. As a citizen, he was ever blessing and ever blessed. He kept aloof from the political storms which so often raged around him. I believe they gave him the greatest anxieties of his life; for he generally recognized in the spirits of the storm, the lineaments of his pupils, and however he may have regarded the blasts, he regarded them with a father's love. He did them but justice; for in their bitterest strifes, they always guided the tempest above his lowly dwelling, or hushed it into a fitful silence until it past. This sketch of Dr. WADDEL's character, will be considered as overdrawn by those who did not know him it will not be so considered by those who were well acquainted with him; and yet some [*none*] will duly appreciate it, who do not contemplate it with reference 17 reference to the age in which he lived. It was emphatically the infidel age of the world. Never since the dawn of Christianity, had it to encounter such formidable opposition, as was in full play upon it at that epoch. A band of intellectual giants had risen up in France, embodying a moral force which must have swept the religion of the bible from the earth, had it not been of origin divine. Montesquieu arose, the politician's idol, and while he received the homage of his votaries, who of course believed him infallible, he infused into their minds the poison of his "Persian Letters." Voltaire, a literary Keleidescope, who could exhibit every shape and every beauty without an effort, brought the whole armory of literature to bear upon evangelical truth, with a strategy, in which some of its exhibitions, must hit every taste. In Dederot and D'Alembert, he found auxiliaries less versatile, but more august and irresistible than himself the first, the projector and chief conductor of the grand Encyclopedia, the admiration and the bane of the world the second, a master-mathematician of his day, and eloquent upon every subject. While these were laying waste the moral world, Buffon, the great naturalist, was exerting all the weight of his imposing character, to recommend a substitute for it, in exclusive materialism. And while this glittering host were taking captive the souls of men, and leading them to ruin, Rousseau, in Syren notes of sweetest romance, was charming the souls of women into their wake. Thus were the morals of every class, and every sex, besieged by the most insidious of all foes. God, as if disposed to let these magicians work miracles abundant, to their country's undoing, suffered all of them to live far beyond the common life of man to lap life on life, until they presented almost an unbroken phalanx, and to pile tome on tome, until nothing could be added to their works. Their work was done, and it was performing its office fearfully in France, and not much less fearfully in this country, her recent ally, and no where in it, more than in Virginia. Paine, a clever writer, with at least the talents of a skillful propagandist, was carrying on an active traffic between the two countries, in the poisons of the French laboratory. It was at this time, and under these circumstances, that MOSES WADDEL, young, gifted and inquisitive of learning, entered Hampden Sidney College. He could scarcely open a book, he could scarcely read a gazette, he could scarcely converse in the street, without coming in contact with the moral [vices] virus of the Gallic infection. And yet it was 3 18 at this time, in this place, and at this age, he sought and obtained his commission to use his pebbles and his sling, against this host of intellectual Goliahs [Goliaths]. He lived to see the principles of these brilliant reformers, in full operation. France convulsed and frenzied, disgorging blood at every spasm, and in maniac strength and vacancy, strangling all who offered her relief. The shrieks of women and children, mingling with the paean of liberty. The Marseilles hymn reverberating through the streets of Paris, to the beat of the guillotine. Furies, rushing from the lady's toilet and the mother's nursery, to urge on the dogs of war upon their countrymen and kinmen. Robespiere, Marat and Danton, unkenneled and in ravenous pursuit of the amiable Lafayette. A republic in throes, and a despot born! And now, when these splendid empyrics, who medicated France into her tortures and her madness, sleep forgotten or despised; the brightest of the best of this best land, descend from its loftiest and most consecrated places, hand in hand with their children, and their children's children, to offer gratitude's devotion at Dr. WADDEL's grave. Oh, while we present the offering, let us imbibe the spirit which animated the dust that we honor. I have not carried the history of our deceased friend, beyond the point of time, when palsey dealt to him the fatal blow. None of us wish to hear the details of the years which followed. The rest is briefly told. His light was out, his mind was dark, "And he sat in his age's lateness" Like a phantom sage, "a solemn mark, Of the frailty of human greatness." "His silver beard, o'er a bosom spread, Unvexed by life's commotion, Like a yearly lengthening snow-drift shed, On the calm of a frozen ocean. Still on him oblivion's water's lay, Though the stream of life kept flowing-- As they spoke of "our friend" 'twas "but to say The good old man "is going." "He is gone at last, he is laid in the dust, Death's hand his slumbers breaking; For the coffin'd sleep, of the good and just, Is a sure and blissful waking." "His" pupil's "heart, is his funeral urn, And should sculptured stone be denied him; There will his name be found when in turn, We lay our heads beside him."