stituted their great name Jao, or Jove. In short, in all my cabalistic, theurgic, necromantic, magical and astrological researches, from the Tetractys of Pythagoras, to the recondite works of Breslaw and mother Bunch, I have not discovered the least vestige of an origin of this word, nor have I discovered any word of sufficient potency to coun

teract it.

Not to keep my reader in any suspense, the word which had so wonderfully arrested the attention of William the Testy, and which in German characters had a particularly black and ominous aspect, on being fairly translated into the English is no other than ECONOMY-a talismanic term, which, by constant use and frequent mention, has ceased to be formidable in our eyes, but which has as terrible potency as any in the arcana of necromancy.

When pronounced in a national assembly it has an immediate effect in closing the hearts, beclouding the intellects, drawing the purse strings, and buttoning the breeches pockets of all philosophic legislators. Nor are its effects on the eyes less wonderful. It produces a contraction of the retina, an obscurity of the crystalline lens, a viscidity of the vitreous, and an inspissation of the aqueous humours, an induration of the tunica sclerotica, and a convexity of the cornea; insomuch that the organ of vision loses its strength and perspicuity, and the unfortunate patient becomes myopes, or

in plain English, pur-blind; perceiving only the amount of immediate expense, without being able to look further, and regard it in connexion with the ultimate object to be effected." So that," to quote the words of the eloquent Burke, "a briar at his nose is of greater magnitude than an oak at five hundred yards distance." Such are its instantaneous operations, and the results are still more astonishing. By its magic influence seventy-fours shrink into frigates-frigates into sloops, and sloops into gun-boats.

This all potent word, which served as his touchstone in politics, at once explains the whole system of proclamations, protests, empty threats, windmills, trumpeters, and paper war, carried on by Wilhelmus the Testy-and we may trace its operations in an armament which he fitted out in 1642 in a moment of great wrath, consisting of two sloops and thirty men, under the command of mynher Jan Jansen Alpendam, as admiral of the fleet, and commander in chief of the forces. This formidable expedition, which can only be paralleled by some of the daring cruizes of our infant navy about the bay and up the sound, was intended to drive the Marylanders from the Schuylkill, of which they had recently taken possessionand which was claimed as part of the province of New-Nederlandts-for it appears that at this time our infant colony was in that enviable state, so much coveted by ambitious nations, that is to say,

the government had a vast extent of territory, part of which it enjoyed, and the greater part of which it had continually to quarrel about.

Admiral Jan Jansen Alpendam was a man of great mettle and prowess, and no way dismayed at the character of the enemy, who were represented as a gigantic, gunpowder race of men, who lived on hoe cakes and bacon, drank mint juleps and apple toddy, and were exceedingly expert at boxing, biting, gouging, tar and feathering, and a variety of other athletic accomplishments, which they had borrowed from their cousins german and prototypes the Virginians, to whom they have ever borne considerable resemblance-notwithstanding all these alarming representations, the admiral entered the Schuylkill most undauntedly with his fleet, and arrived without disaster or opposition at the place of destination.

Here he attacked the enemy in a vigorous speech in low Dutch, which the wary Kieft had previously put in his pocket; wherein he courteously commenced by calling them a pack of lazy, louting, dram drinking, cock fighting, horse racing, slave driving, tavern haunting, sabbath breaking, mulatto breeding upstarts-and concluded by ordering them to evacuate the country immediately--to which they most laconically replied in plain English," they'd see him dd first."

Now this was a reply for which neither Jan Jansen Alpendam, nor Wilhelmus Kieft had made

any calculation-and finding himself totally unprepared to answer so terrible a rebuff with suitable hostility, he concluded that his wisest course was to return home and report progress. He accordingly sailed back to New-Amsterdam, where he was received with great honours, and considered as a pattern for all commanders, having achieved a most hazardous enterprise, at a trifling expense of treasure, and without losing a single man to the state!-He was unanimously called the deliverer of his country (an appellation liberally bestowed on all great men); his two sloops having done their duty, were laid up (or dry docked) in a cove now called the Albany basin, where they quietly rotted in the mud; and to immortalize his name, they erected, by subscription, a magnificent shingle monument on the top of Flatten barrack hill, which lasted three whole years; when it fell to pieces, and was burnt for firewood.

CHAPTER V.

How William the Testy enriched the province by a multitude of laws, and came to be the patron of lawyers and bum-bailiffs. And how the people became exceedingly enlightened and unhappy, under his instructions.

AMONG the many wrecks and fragments of exalted wisdom, which have floated down the stream of time, from venerable antiquity, and have been carefully picked up by those humble, but industrious wights, who ply along the shores of literature, we find the following sage ordinance of Charondas, the Locrian legislator-Anxious to preserve the ancient laws of the state from the additions and improvements of profound "country members," or officious candidates for popularity, he ordained, that whoever proposed a new law, should do it with a halter about his neck; so that in case his proposition was rejected, they just hung him up-and there the matter ended.

This salutary institution had such an effect, that for more than two hundred years there was only one trifling alteration in the criminal code-and the whole race of lawyers starved to death for want of employment. The consequence of this