house of the manager of the plantation, the pilgrims returned to hospitable Brandon.
Mr. Thompson makes an earnest appeal for the preservation of whatever remains of Jamestown and its protection from the stormy winds and tides. The A. P. V. A. now have well in hand the work for which he entreated and the Federal Government is helping them to stay the encroachments of the waters, which have already enrivered nearly the whole of what was so long the capital of Virginia.
Once more the editor salutes his patrons and the public: "With the present number, the Messenger enters upon the second quarter of a century of its existence. Twenty-five years have been completed since its first appearance and a second generation of readers have grown up in the interim. The occasion is interesting in itself; but it is rendered doubly so by the present excited state of feeling in the United States."
He then takes a view of the troublous state of our country and argues that, whether the Union be preserved, or severed, the South ought to maintain its own independent position in the Republic of Letters. He shows how much less sectional the Messenger has been in its literary work than the Northern magazines and how just and impartial it has been toward litterateurs "beyond the Tweed."
