Matthew Fontaine Maury.

Sweep your eye over the names of the great men of our Old Domain, from the days of John Smith to those of Claude A. Swanson and William Hodges Mann, and see if in this vast galaxy there be one more fitted than Matthew Fontaine Maury to fill this niche.

Given pure, heroic Huguenot blood, blended with that of the Anglo-Saxon, and we have the splendid result–a man of birth, brains and benefaction He who fathomed the ocean’s depths and learned the secrets of the wind, thereby giving the mariner a chart to this great water highway, and to the agriculturist the means whereby he could with intelligence sow his grain and reap his golden harvest; he who was honored by foreign powers (most deservedly) and lent his aid to Mexico in an hour of need, quietly in his later life retired to historic Lexington, Va., and consecrated his great talents and magnificent genius to the Instruction of Virginia’s young manhood (as did our beloved Lee). Shame be it said! he has no monument of bronze or stone; but we to-day place him in Virginia’s Hall of Fame, encircling his memory with loving reverence, fully appreciating his glorious worth as a Christian gentleman, naval officer scholar, inventor and explorer.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have the honor and pleasure to present Matthew Fontaine Maury, born in Spotsylvania county, Va., January 14, 1806; died in Lexington, Va., February 1, 1878.

MARY BLAIR HAWES.