it had been a discharge of artillery-mistaking lamp-posts for British grenadiers, and in the excess of their panic, metamorphosing pumps into formidable soldiers, levelling blunderbusses at their bosoms! Having, however, in despite of numerous perils and difficulties of the kind, arrived safe, without the loss of a single man, at the hall of assembly, they took their seats and awaited in fearful silence the arrival of the governor. In a few moments the wooden leg of the intrepid Peter was heard in regular and stout-hearted thumps upon the staircase.-He entered the chamber, arrayed in full suit of regimentals, and carrying his trusty toledo, not girded on his thigh, but tucked under his arm. As the governor never equipped himself in this portentous manner, unless something of martial nature were working within his fearless pericranium, his council regarded him ruefully, as a very Janus, bearing fire and sword in his iron countenance, and forgot to light their pipes in breathless suspense.

The great Peter was as eloquent as he was valorous; indeed, these two rare qualities seemed to go hand in hand in his composition; and, unlike most great statesmen, whose victories are only confined to the bloodless field of argument, he was always ready to enforce his hardy words by no less hardy deeds. His speeches were generally marked by a simplicity, approaching to bluntness, and by truly categorical decision. Addressing the grand council, he touched briefly upon the perils and hardships he had sustained, in escaping from his crafty foes. He next reproached the council, for wasting in idle debate, and party feuds, that time which should have been devoted to their country. He was particularly indignant at those brawlers, who, conscious of individual security, had disgraced the councils of the province, by impotent hectorings and scurrilous invectives, against a noble and a powerful enemy-those cowardly curs, who were incessant in their barkings and yelpings at the lion, while distant or asleep,

but the moment he approached, were the first to skulk away. He now called on those who had been so valiant in their threats against Great Britain, to stand forth and support their vauntings by their actions-for it was deeds, not words, that bespoke the spirit of a nation. He proceeded to recal the golden days of former prosperity, which were only to be gained by manfully withstanding their enemies; for the peace, he observed, which is affected by force of arms, is always more sure and durable, than that which is patched up by temporary accommodations. He endeavoured, moreover, to arouse their martial fire, by reminding them of the time, when, before the frowning walls of fort Christina, he had led them on to victory. He strove likewise to awaken their confidence, by assuring them of the protection of St. Nicholas, who had hitherto maintained them in safety, amid all the savages of the wilderness, the witches and squatters of the east, and the giants of Merry-land. Finally, he informed them of the insolent summons he had received, to surrender; but concluded by swearing to defend the province as long as heaven was on his side, and he had a wooden leg to stand upon. Which noble sentence he emphasized by a tremendous thwack with the broad side of his sword upon the table, that totally electrified his auditors.

The privy counsellors, who had long been accustomed to the governor's way, and in fact had been brought into as perfect discipline, as were ever the soldiers of the great Frederick, saw that there was no use in saying a wordso lighted their pipes and smoked away in silence like fat and discreet counsellors. But the burgomasters being less. under the governor's control, considering themselves as representatives of the sovereign people, and being moreover inflated with considerable importance and self-sufficiency, which they had acquired at those notable schools of wisdom and morality, the popular meetings-were not so easily satisfied. Mustering up fresh spirit, when they

found there was some chance of escaping from their present jeopardy, without the disagreeable alternative of fighting, they requested a copy of the summons to surrender, that they might show it to a general meeting of the people.

upon

So insolent and mutinous a request would have been enough to have roused the gorge of the tranquil Van Twiller himself what then must have been its effect the great Stuyvesant, who was not only a Dutchman, a governor, and a valiant wooden-legged soldier to boot, but withal a man of the most stomachful and gunpowder disposition. He burst forth into a blaze of noble indignation, to which the famous rage of Achilles was a mere pouting fit swore not a mother's son of them should see a syllable of it-that they deserved, every one of them, to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, for traitorously daring to question the infallibility of government; that as to their advice or concurrence, , he did not care a whiff of tobacco for either; that he had long been harassed and thwarted by their cowardly councils; but that they might thenceforth go home, and go to bed like old women, for he was determined to defend the colony himself, without the assistance of them or their adherents! So saying he tucked his sword under his arm, cocked his hat upon his head, and girding up his loins, stumped indignantly out of the council-chamber, every body making room for him as he passed.

No sooner had he gone than the busy burgomasters called a public meeting in front of the Stadt-house, where they appointed as chairman one Dofue Roerback, a mighty gingerbread-baker in the land, and formerly of the cabinet of William the Testy. He was looked up to with great reverence by the populace, who considered him a man of dark knowledge, seeing he was the first that imprinted new-year cakes with the mysterious hieroglyphics of the cock and breeches, and such like magical devices.

This great burgomaster, who still chewed the cud of ill

will against the valiant Stuyvesant, in consequence of having been ignominiously kicked out of his cabinet at the time of his taking the reins of government, addressed the greasy multitude in what is called a patriotic speech; in which he informed them of the courteous summons to surrender of the governor's refusal to comply therewith -of his denying the public a sight of the summons, which, he had no doubt, contained conditions highly to the honour and advantage of the province.

He then proceeded to speak of his excellency in high sounding terms, suitable to the dignity and grandeur of his station, comparing him to Nero, Caligula, and those other great men of yore, who are generally quoted by popular orators on similar occasions. Assuring the people that the history of the world did not contain a despotic outrage to equal the present for atrocity, cruelty, tyranny, and blood-thirstiness; that it would be recorded in letters of fire on the blood-stained tablet of history! that ages would roll back with sudden horror, when they came to view it! That the womb of time-(by the way your orators and writers take strange liberties with the womb of time, though some would fain have us believe that time is an old gentleman)-that the womb of time, pregnant 'as it was with direful horrors, would never produce a parallel enormity !-with a variety of other heartrending, soul-stirring tropes and figures, which I cannot enumerate. Neither, indeed, need I, for they were exactly the same that are used in all popular harangues and patriotic orations at the present day, and may be classed in rhetoric under the general title of RIGMAROLE.

The speech of this inspired burgomaster being finished, the meeting fell into a kind of popular fermentation, which produced not only a string of right wise resolutions, but likewise a most resolute memorial, addressed to the governor, remonstrating at his conduct; which was no sooner handed to him, than he handed it into the fire; and thus

deprived posterity of an invaluable document, that might have served as a precedent to the enlightened cobblers and tailors of the present day, in their sage intermeddlings with politics.

CHAPTER VII

Containing a doleful disaster of Anthony the Trumpeter; and how Peter Stuyvesant, like a second Cromwell, suddenly dissolved a Rump Parliament.

Now did the high-minded Pieter de Groodt shower down a pannier-load of benedictions upon his burgomasters, for a set of self-willed, obstinate, headstrong varlets, who would neither be convinced nor persuaded; and determined thenceforth to have nothing more to do with them, but to consult merely the opinion of his privy counsellors, which he knew from experience to be the best in the world, inasmuch as it never differed from his

Nor did he omit, now that his hand was in, to be stow some thousand left-handed compliments upon the sovereign people, whom he railed at for a herd of poltroons, who had no relish for the glorious hardships and illustrious misadventures of battle-but would rather stay at home, and eat and sleep in ignoble ease, than gain immortality and a broken head, by valiantly fighting in a ditch.

Resolutely bent, however, upon defending his beloved city, in despite even of itself, he called unto him his trusty Van Corlear, who was his right-hand man in all times of emergency. Him did he adjure to take his war-denouncing trumpet, and mounting his horse, to beat up the country, night and day-sounding the alarm along the