sorrowing and comfort the dying-than to have written Gibbon's 'Rome.'" Truly (as he said of Colonel John H. Guy on the occasion of the death of that gentleman) "his life was the combination in exquisite harmony of the true, the good and the beautiful."

The calamity of his death, although not sudden or unexpected, was felt not only by the members of this Association, but by the community at large. To many of us it came as a personal affliction, and to all of us as a reminder of our own mortality. It has been truly said that we observe our fellow-creatures trembling as it were upon the very brink of non-existence, but derive no lesson from the precariousness of their tenure until it has altogether failed. Then, for a moment at least,

Our hopes and fears

Start up alarm'd, and o'er life's narrow verge
Look down-on what?-a fathomless abyss,

A dark eternity,-how surely ours!

L. L. LEWIS.

WALTER D. DABNEY.

PROFESSOR DABNEY was born in Albemarle county Virginia, at the old homestead, "Dunlora," in 1853. His father was a prominent planter of that county, and his mother, a Miss Gordon, of Scotland. The Dabneys were of Huguenot descent; the name having been originally D'Aubigne. He was the third of four sons, one of whom was killed in early youth in defence of his State. His elder brother, the lamented late William C. Dabney, was Professor of Medicine in the University, his promising career in that institution ending with his death in 1893. His younger brother, Gordon Dabney, is now professor in the Louisville College of Medicine, and is one of the most distinguished physicians in that State.

Professor Dabney attended private schools until 1871, when he entered the University with the idea of becoming a civil engineer. He took that course for one year, but at the close of the session determined to teach, and to that end taught one year at the Hanover Institute, conducted by those distinguished educators, Colonel Hillary P. Jones and Major Horace W. Jones, with the latter of whom Professor Dabney had taught one session whilst completing his own education.

In the fall of 1873 Professor Dabney entered the law school of the University, and graduated with the degree of B. L. that session. He then commenced the practice of law in the city of Charlottesville, and soon attracted attention by his ability, caution, great capacity for taking pains, and thoroughness in all the business he undertook. His papers were admirably prepared— models of clearness, brief and yet complete. In the summer of 1885 he was induced to become a candidate for the Legislature, and was elected to the House of Delegates in the fall of that year. To that body he was reëlected for three sessions. Very soon after his entrance into the Legislature he took a high stand, and was made chairman of the Committee on Railroads and Internal