h it has
been exposed receive for ever, from posterity, the tribute of their
tears. This is the immortal monument reserved for virtue in a world
where every thing else passes away, and where the names, even of the
greater number of kings themselves, are soon buried in eternal oblivion.

"Meanwhile Virginia still exists. My son, you see that every thing
changes on this earth, but that nothing is ever lost. No art of man can
annihilate the smallest particle of matter; can, then, that which
has possessed reason, sensibility, affection, virtue, and religion be
supposed capable of destruction, when the very elements with which it is
clothed are imperishable? Ah! however happy Virginia may have been with
us, she is now much more so. There is a God, my son; it is unnecessary
for me to prove it to you, for the voice of all nature loudly proclaims
it. The wickedness of mankind leads them to deny the existence of a
Being, whose justice they fear. But your mind is fully convinced of
his existence, while his works are ever before your eyes. Do you then
believe that he would leave Virginia without recompense? Do you
think that the same Power which inclosed her noble soul in a form so
beautiful,--so like an emanation from itself, could not have saved her
from the waves?--that he who has ordained the happiness of man here, by
laws unknown to you, cannot prepare a still higher degree of felicity
for Virginia by other laws, of which you are equally ignorant? Before
we were born into this world, could we, do you imagine, even if we were
capable of thinking at all, have formed any idea of our existence here?
And now that we are in the middle of this gloomy and transitory life,
can we foresee what is beyond the tomb, or in what manner we shall be
emancipated from it? Does God, like man, need this little globe,
the earth, as a theatre for the display of his intelligence and his
goodness?--and can he only dispose of human life in the territory of
death? There is not, in the entire ocean, a single drop of water which
is not peopled with living beings appertaining to man: and does there
exist nothing for him in the heavens above his head? What! is there no
supreme intelligence, no divine goodness, except on this little spot
where we are placed? In those innumerable glowing fires,--in those
infinite fields of light which surround them, and which neither storms
nor darkness can extinguish, is there nothing but empty space and an
eternal void? If