tual 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 pests in the world were bounteously provided as themes for the poet and the historian, while the poet and 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 unwieldy limbs, and clumsily arouses from its slumbers; so the province of the Nieuw Nederlandts, having long thriven 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 toward 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 foremost.

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 Von 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 in 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 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 name 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 burned up by his fiery soul, which blazed like a vehement rushlight 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 buttons nearly as large as the shield of Ajax, 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, like the regions of Terra del Fuego, were scorched into a dusky red-doubtless, in consequence of the neighbourhood of two fierce little gray eyes, through which his torrid soul beamed as fervently as a tropical sun blazing through a pair of burning glasses. The corners of his mouth were curiously modelled into a kind of fretwork, 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, which seem to manufacture bachelors of arts by some patent machine. Here he skirmished very smartly on the frontiers of several of the sciences, and made so gallant an inroad on the dead languages, as to bring off captive a host of Greek nouns and Latin verbs, together with divers pithy saws and apophthegms; all which he con

stantly 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 ravished. 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. In plain words, like many other profound intermeddlers in this abstruse, bewildering science, he so confused his brain with abstract speculations which he could not comprehend, and artificial distinctions which he could not realize, that he could never think clearly on any subject, however simple, through the whole course of his life afterwards. 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 a 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 very much in his way; and had he been less a learned man, it is possible he would have been a much greater governor.

He was exceedingly fond of trying philosophical and political experiments: and having stuffed his head full of scraps and remnants of ancient republics, and oligarchies, and aristocracies, and monarchies, and the laws of Solon, and Lycurgus, and Charondas, and the imaginary commonwealth of Plato, and the Pandects of Justinian, and a thousand other fragments of venerable antiquity, he was for ever bent upon introducing some one or other of them into use; so that between one contradictory measure and another, he entangled the government of the little province of Nieuw Nederlandts in more knots, during his administration, than half a dozen successors could have untied.

No sooner had this bustling little man been blown by a whiff of fortune into the seat of government, than he called together his council, and delivered a very animated speech on the affairs of the province. As every body knows what a glorious opportunity a governor, a president, or even an emperor has of drubbing his enemies in his speeches, messages, and bulletins, where he has the talk all on his own side, they may be sure the high-mettled William Kieft did not suffer so favourable an occasion to escape him, of evincing that gallantry of tongue common to all able legislators. Before he commenced, it is recorded that he took out his pocket handkerchief, and gave a very sonorous blast of the nose, according to the usual custom of great orators. This, in general, I believe, is intended as a signal trumpet, to call the attention of the auditors; but with William the Testy it boasted a more classic cause, for he had read of the singular expedient of that famous demagogue Caius Gracchus, who, when he harangued the Roman populace, modulated his tones by an oratorical flute or pitch-pipe.

This preparatory symphony being performed, he commenced by expressing an humble sense of his own want of talents, his utter unworthiness of the honour conferred upon him, and his humiliating incapacity to discharge the important duties of his new station; in short, he expressed so contemptible an opinion of himself, that many simple country members present, ignorant that these were mere words of course, always used on such occasions, were very uneasy, and even felt wrath that he should accept an office for which he was consciously so inadequate.

He then proceeded in a manner highly classic, pro

foundly erudite, and nothing at all to the purpose; being nothing more than a pompous account of all the governments of ancient Greece, and the wars of Rome and Carthage, together with the rise and fall of sundry outlandish empires, about which the assembly knew no more than their great grandchildren who were yet unborn. Thus having, after the manner of your learned orators, convinced the audience that he was a man of many words and great erudition, he at length came to the less important part of his speech, the situation of the province; and here he soon worked himself into a fearful rage against the Yankees, whom he compared to the Gauls who desolated Rome, and the Goths and Vandals who overran the fairest plains of Europe-nor did he forget to mention, in terms of adequate opprobrium, the insolence with which they had encroached upon the territories of New Netherlands, and the unparalleled audacity with which they had commenced the town of New Plymouth, and planted the onion patches of Weathersfield under the very walls of Fort Goed Hoop.

Having thus artfully wrought up his tale of terror to a climax, he assumed a self-satisfied look, and declared, with a nod of knowing import, that he had taken measures to put a final stop to these encroachments-that he had been obliged to have recourse to a dreadful engine of warfare, lately invented, awful in its effects, but authorised by direful necessity. In a word, he was resolved to conquer the Yankees by proclamation.

For this purpose he had prepared a tremendous instrument of the kind, ordering, commanding, and enjoining the intruders aforesaid, forthwith to remove, depart, and withdraw from the districts, regions, and territories aforesaid, under the pain of suffering all the penalties, forfei tures, and punishments, in such case made and provided, &c. This proclamation, he assured them, would at once exterminate the enemy from the face of the country; and he pledged his valour as a governor, that within two months after it was published, not one stone should remain on another in any of the towns which they had built.

The council remained for some time silent after he had finished; whether struck dumb with admiration at the brilliancy of his project, or put to sleep by the length of his harangue, the history of the times doth not mention. Suffice it to say, they at length gave a general grunt of