Mary Howitt

“ The utmost depression prevailed in the American camp at Harlem. The favour of Heaven, it was feared, had deserted their cause. Anxiety, despondency and dread filled all hearts; and sickness, the necessary concomitant of such a state of mind, prevailed greatly. There were no proper hospitals; the sick lay in barns and sheds, and even in the open air under walls and fences. The army was wasting away by the expiration of service and desertion; few would enlist. It seemed as if ere long America must yield from the mere inability to sustain her army. ”

“ New England, which possessed within itself not only an expansive principle, but one which took deep root on any soil which it touched, had planted not only a little settlement on Cape Fear, which had been fostered in its distresses by the mother-colony, but had sown the seeds of democratic liberty, from which, in part, must be traced the resolute spirit which distinguished the colony of North Carolina in the long struggle through which it had to pass. ”

“ It is a remarkably cheerful little bird, and is warmly welcomed by all lovers of the country as being one of the first visitants of spring, sending its pleasant little voice, with an incessant “chiff-chaff,” “chery-charry,” through the yet leafless trees.
Its plumage is dark olive-green; the breast and under part of the body, white, with a slight tinge of yellow; the tail, brown, edged with pale green; legs, yellowish-brown.
The nest is not unlike that of a wren, built in a low bush, and, sometimes, even on the ground. ”

“ This inscription, together with the old church at Willington in Delaware, and a few family names, are all that remain of this early Swedish colony on the eastern shores of the New World. Yet no, not all. A noble, peaceful memory of its life continues to exist on the page of history, like a lovely episode of Idyllian purity and freshness. The pilgrims of New England stained its soil with blood by their injustice and cruelty to the Indians. ”

“ As soon as the female is here, and the birds have paired, the business of nest-building begins, and they may then be seen flying in and out of the bushes with great alertness, the he-bird carolling his light and airy song, and often hurling himself, as it were, up into the air, some twenty or thirty feet, in a wild, tipsy sort of way, as if he were fuller of life than he could hold, and coming down again with a warble into the hedge, where the little hen-wife is already arranging her dwelling in the very spot probably where she was herself hatched, and her ancestors before her, for ages. ”

“ Christmas was now at hand, and gloom and despondency pervaded the American mind. The sixty days were passing on, and the timid and vacillating were giving in their adherence to the British, when Washington, as it were, rose up and girded his loins for action. Aware that the festivities of the season would be fully enjoyed in the British camp, he resolved to avail himself of the time for an unexpected attack, and selected the Hessians stationed at Trenton as its object. ”

“ The little brown nightingale, with his little brown wife in the thickety copse, with their simple unpretending nest, not built up aloft on the tree branch, but humbly at the tree’s root, or even on the very ground itself, may teach us that the world’s external show or costliness is not true greatness. The world’s best bird-singer might have been as big as an eagle, attired in colours of blue and scarlet and orange like the grandest macaw. ”

“ Is not the true benevolence and the true Christianity rather to gradually, wisely and justly abolish slavery—to prepare the black man to be a good and useful citizen of a great and free country, and more productive to his master as a servant than as a slave? ”

“ Marquette and Joliet were the first white men who trod the soil of Iowa. Commending themselves to God, they raised a shout, on which four old men advanced slowly to meet them, bearing the peace-pipe, brilliant with many-coloured plumes. ‘We are Illinois,’ said they—that is, when translated, ‘We are men!’—and they offered the calumet. An aged chief received the strangers with great joy at his cabin, and the whole village gazed on them with friendly astonishment.
“At a great council Marquette published to them the One true God, their Creator. ”

“ This nest is a wonderful little fabric, built of moss, dry grass, and slender roots, lined with hair, wool, and thistle-down; but the true wonder of the nest is the exact manner in which the outside is made to imitate the bough upon which it is placed. All its little ruggednesses and lichen growths are represented, whilst the colouring is so exactly that of the old apple-tree that it is almost impossible to know it from the branch itself. Wonderful ingenuity of instinct, which human skill would find it almost impossible to imitate! ”

“ And again, “It is the great end of government to support power in reverence with the people, and to secure the people from the abuse of power; for liberty without obedience is confusion, and obedience without liberty is slavery.” ”

“ Succeeding in part, and preserving something like the order of battle, the horrors of the moment were increased; for his men, “penned like sheep in a fold,” were the better mark for the invisible enemy, who themselves, expecting merely to harass, never hoping to defeat, were astonished at their own success. The Indians, singling out the officers, shot down every one; of eighty-six officers, twenty-six were killed and thirty-seven wounded; of the men one-half were killed or wounded. Washington alone seemed to be preserved as by an especial Providence. ”

“ All these wild roses and honeysuckles, all this maiden hair, and this broad polypody, which grows golden in autumn, make up his little kingdom, in the very heart of which, under a ledge of rock, and within sound, almost within the spray of the waterfall, is built the curious little nest, very like that of a wren, in which sits the hen-bird, the little wife of the dipper, brooding with most unwearied love on four or five white eggs, lightly touched with red. ”

“ These they asserted to be, “to choose their own governor, deputy-governor, and representatives; to admit freemen on terms to be prescribed at their own pleasure; to set up all sorts of officers, superior and inferior, with such powers and duties as they might appoint; to exercise, by their annually-elected magistrates and deputies, all authority legislative, executive and judicial; to defend themselves by force of arms against any aggression; and to reject any and every imposition which they might judge prejudicial to the colony, and contrary to any just act of colonial legislation.” ”

“ The day before the battle of Bunker’s Hill, the Provincial congress at Philadelphia, having voted to raise an army of 20,000 men, proceeded to elect George Washington, then present as delegate from Virginia, to the rank of commander-in-chief. The northern colonies had resolved, in order to secure the adherence of the South, to choose a southern commander, and the superior wisdom of Providence guided them in the selection. God provides the man for the work, and Washington was the appointed agent of a great people’s emancipation. Divine wisdom, and not that of man, guided the choice. ”

“ His are unpretending little songs of intense enjoyment, simple thanksgivings for the pleasures of life, for the little brown hen-bird, who has not a bit of scarlet in her plumage, and who sits in her snug nest on her fine little white eggs, with their circle of freckles and brown spots at the thicker end, always alike, a sweet, patient mother, waiting for the time when the young ones will come into life from that delicate shell-covering, blind at first, though slightly clothed in greyish-brown—five little linnets gaping for food. ”

“ If we could not assure people of an easy, free and safe government, liberty of conscience and an inviolable possession of their civil rights and freedoms, a mere wilderness would be no encouragement. It were madness to leave a free country to plant a wilderness, and give another person an absolute title to tax us at will.
“The customs imposed by the government of New York are not only a burden but a wrong. The King of England cannot take his subjects’ goods without their consent. This is a home-born right, declared to be law by divers statutes. ”

“ We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. ”

“ These conditions, so favourable to liberty, worthy to be granted by the champions of political and civil liberty in England, were a cause of great satisfaction to Virginia; and so earnest was the spirit of her submission and her desire to establish an amicable understanding with the mother-country, that Richard Bennett, one of the commissioners of the Parliament, a merchant and a Roundhead, was unanimously elected governor in the place of Sir William Berkeley.
The spirit of democratic liberty, like a strong young tree, grew with every change of season. ”

“ As Luther, in a moment of despondency, when enemies were rife around him, and calumny and wrong pursued him, heard the glad song of a bird that came and sang on a bough before his window, we have thanked God for the lesson of the never-drooping chill-chall. The great world around never damps its joy with a sense of its own insignificance; the active and often showy life of man, the active and varied existence of even birds, which sweep through the air in gay companies, never disturb its pleasure in its little accustomed nook. ”

“ It was time that summary measures were taken, for disaffection and sedition were spreading in all directions; armed mobs were marching everywhere, erecting liberty-poles and committing deeds of violence. Fifteen thousand men were sent into the disaffected districts, under General Lee of Virginia. No sooner was the news abroad that this formidable army was advancing against them, than the tide of democratic violence began to ebb; liberty-poles were pulled down, and the armed insurgents dispersed. ”

“ But the great Creator willed that it should not be so—his strength, and his furiousness, and his cruel capacity were sufficient for the eagle, and his shining vestments for the macaw; whilst the bird to which was given the divinest gift of song must be humble and unobtrusive, small of size, with no surpassing beauty of plumage, and loving best to hide itself in the thick seclusion of the copse in which broods the little mother-bird, the very counterpart of himself, upon her olive-coloured eggs. ”

“ Through this terrible war the Mohegans had remained faithful to the English, and no blood had been shed in happy Connecticut. The war was at an end, but vengeance was not yet appeased. Many chiefs, noted warriors of their respective tribes, were executed at Boston and Plymouth; 200 Indians, who had on one occasion come to treat of peace, were treacherously taken prisoners and carried to Boston, where some were hanged, and others sold as slaves. A bloodthirsty and remorseless spirit governed the whole colony. ”

“ Nevertheless,” concluded he, “the union by a lasting and honourable peace is the ardent wish of every American. The British nation will then find us as affectionate and valuable friends as we now are determined and fatal enemies, and will derive from that friendship more solid and real advantage than the most sanguine can expect from conquest.”
On the 22nd of April, congress officially declared, that any man or body of men, who should presume to make any separate or partial agreement with the commission under the crown of Great Britain, should be considered as enemies of the United States ”

“ The aged Andrew Hamilton, a lawyer of Philadelphia, addressed the jury for the printer. “This is not,” he said, “the cause of a poor printer of New York alone; it is the best cause—the cause of liberty. Every man who prefers freedom to a life of 389slavery will bless and honour you as men, who, by an impartial verdict, lay a noble foundation for securing to ourselves, our posterity, and our neighbours, that to which nature and the honour of our country have given us a right—the liberty of opposing arbitrary power by speaking and writing truth.” ”

“ I am not aware of the height to which the lark soars, but it must be very great, as he becomes diminished to a mere speck, almost invisible in the blaze of light. Yet, high as he may soar, he never loses the consciousness of the little mate and the nestlings below: but their first cry of danger or anxiety, though the cry may be scarce audible to the human ear, thrills up aloft to the singer, and he comes down with a direct arrow-like flight, whilst otherwise his descent is more leisurely, and said by some to be in the direct spiral line of his ascent. ”

“ Every family was taught to look up to God, as the fountain of all good. Yet life was not sombre; the spirit of frolic mingled with innocence; religion itself assumed a garb of gaiety, and the annual thanksgiving was as joyous as it was sincere. Frugality was the rule of life, both private and public. Half a century after the concession of the charter, the annual expenses of government did not exceed £800. ”

“ On another occasion, the mother bird, trying this plan to no purpose, seemed to lose patience, and seizing one of them by the lower mandible, with the claw of her right foot, whilst it was gaping for food, tried to pull it out of the nest, to which, however, it clung like a squirrel. But the young, every one of them, fly in time, and a right joyous holiday they all have together. ”

“ George Fox himself, in 1672, visited his “Friends” there, and committed to them “the firm support of the good of the people.” The creative power of good in the colony he declared to be the instruction of all the people in their rights; “you are the unworthiest men upon earth,” added he, “if you do lose the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free in life and glory,”—for he and his early Friends regarded Christianity, taken in its own broad and catholic spirit, as the great emancipator of the human race.
The joy of the colonists, on receiving their noble charter, was extreme. ”

“ All the cares of life are now over, their young broods are around them, and now, with nothing to do but to enjoy themselves in the freedom of nature, where—on every hand, on every bush and tree, and in every outlying field—though the crops are now carried, all except, perhaps, here and there a solitary field in which the bean-shocks stand up black in the golden autumnal sunshine ”