tor of inland lock navigation, that rivers, lakes and oceans, were only formed to feed canals. In like manner I am tempted to believe, that plots, conspiracies, wars, victories, and massacres, are ordained by Providence only as food for the historian.

It is a source of great delight to the philosopher, in studying the wonderful economy of nature, to trace the mutual dependencies of things, how they are created reciprocally for each other, and how the most noxious and apparently unnecessary animal has its uses. Thus those swarms of flies, which are so often execrated as useless vermin, are created for the sustenance of spiders-and spiders, on the other hand, are evidently made to devour flies. So those heroes who have been such scourges to the world, were bounteously provided as themes for the poet and the historian, while the poet and the historian were destined to record the achievements of heroes!

These, and many similar reflections, naturally arose in my mind, as I took up my pen to commence the reign of William Kieft: for now the stream of our history, which hitherto has rolled in a tranquil current, is about to depart for ever from its peaceful haunts, and brawl through many a turbulent and rugged scene. Like some sleek ox, which, having fed and fattened in a rich clover field lies sunk in luxurious repose, and will bear repeated taunts and blows, before it heaves its un

wieldy limbs and clumsily arouses from its slumbers. So the province of the Nieuw-Nederlandts, having long thrived and grown corpulent, under the prosperous reign of the Doubter, was reluctantly awakened to a melancholy conviction, that by patient sufferance, its grievances had become so numerous and aggravating, that it was preferable to repel than endure them. The reader will now witness the manner in which a peaceful community advances towards a state of war; which it is too apt to approach, as a horse does a drum, with much prancing and parade, but with little progress-and too often with the wrong end fore

most.

WILHELMUS KIEFT, who in 1634 ascended the Gubernatorial chair (to borrow a favourite, though clumsy appellation of modern phraseologists), was in form, feature, and character, the very reverse of Wouter Van Twiller, his renowned predecessor. He was of very respectable descent, his father being Inspector of Windmills in the ancient town of Saardam; and our hero, we are told, made very curious investigations into the nature and operations of those machines when a boy, which is one reason why he afterwards came to be so ingenious a governor. His name, according to the most ingenious etymologists, was a corruption of Kyver, that is to say, a wrangler or scolder, and f expressed the hereditary disposition of his family; which for nearly two centuries, had kept the windy

town of Saardam in hot water, and produced more tartars and brimstones than any ten families in the place and so truly did Wilhelmus Kieft inherit this family endowment, that he had scarcely been a year in the discharge of his government, before he was universally known by the appellation of WILLIAM THE TESTY. ↑

He was a brisk, waspish, little old gentleman, who had dried and withered away, partly through the natural process of years, and partly from being parched and burnt up by his fiery soul; which blazed like a vehement rush light in his bosom, constantly inciting him to most valorous broils, altercations and misadventures. I have heard it observed by a profound and philosophical judge of human nature, that if a woman waxes fat as she grows old, the tenure of her life is very precarious, but if haply she withers, she lives for ever— such likewise was the case with William the Testy, who grew tougher in proportion as he dried. He was some such a little Dutchman as we may now and then see, stumping briskly about the streets of our city, in a broad skirted coat, with huge buttons, an old fashioned cocked hat stuck on the back of his head, and a cane as high as his chin. His visage was broad, but his features sharp, his nose turned up with a most petulant curl; his cheeks were scorched into a dusky red-doubtless in consequence of the neighbourhood of two fierce little gray eyes, through which his torrid soul

beamed with tropical fervour. The corners of his mouth were curiously modelled into a kind of fret work, not a little resembling the wrinkled proboscis of an irritable pug dog-in a word, he was one of the most positive, restless, ugly, little men, that ever put himself in a passion about nothing.

Such were the personal endowments of William the Testy, but it was the sterling riches of his mind that raised him to dignity and power. In his youth he had passed with great credit through a celebrated academy at the Hague, noted for producing finished scholars with a despatch unequalled, except by certain of our American colleges. Here he skirmished very smartly on the frontiers of several of the sciences, and made so gallant an inroad in the dead languages, as to bring off captive a host of Greek nouns and Latin verbs, together with divers pithy saws and apothegms, all which he constantly paraded in conversation and writing, with as much vain glory as would a triumphant general of yore display the spoils of the countries he had ravaged. He had, moreover, puzzled himself considerably with logic, in which he had advanced so far as to attain a very familiar acquaintance, by name at least, with the whole family of syllogisms and dilemmas; but what he chiefly valued himself on, was his knowledge of metaphysics, in which, having once upon a time ventured too deeply, he came well nigh being smothered in a slough of unintelligible learning

a fearful peril, from the effects of which he never perfectly recovered. This, I must confess, was in some measure a misfortune, for he never engaged in argument, of which he was exceeding fond, but what, between logical deductions and metaphysical jargon, he soon involved himself and his subject in a fog of contradictions and perplexities, and then would get into a mighty passion with his adversary, for not being convinced gratis.

It is in knowledge, as in swimming; he who ostentatiously sports and flounders on the surface, makes more noise and splashing, and attracts more attention, than the industrious pearl diver, who plunges in search of treasures to the bottom. The "universal acquirements" of William Kieft, were the subject of great marvel and admiration among his countrymen-he figured about at the Hague with as much vain glory, as does a profound Bonze at Pekin, who has mastered half the letters of the Chinese alphabet; and in a word, was unanimously pronounced an universal genius!-I have known many universal geniuses in my time, though, to speak my mind freely, I never knew one, who, for the ordinary purposes of life, was worth his weight in straw-but for the purposes of government, a little sound judgment, and plain common sense, is worth all the sparkling genius that ever wrote poetry, or invented theories.

Strange as it may sound, therefore, the universal acquirements of the illustrious Wilhelmus, were