Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 097.djvu/442

426 of conscientious, severe, and faithful veracity—"carefully winnowing away the chaff of hypothesis, and discarding the tares of fable, which are too apt to spring up and choke the seeds of truth and wholesome knowledge." Inspired by this stem principle, it is beautiful to hear his disclaimer of all records assailable by scepticism, or vulnerable by critical analysis—his sublime rejection of many a pithy tale and marvellous adventure—his jealous maintenance of that fidelity, gravity, and dignity which he accounts indispensable to his order. The heroes of the New York mythological æon swagger before us in memorable guise. Good Master Hendrick Hudson, for instance, with his mastiff mouth, and his broad copper nose—supposed (the latter, to wit) to have acquired its fiery hue from the constant neighbourhood of the tobacco-pipe; a man remarkable for always jerking up his breeches when he gave out his orders, and for a voice which sounded not unlike the brattling of a tin trumpet, owing to the number of hard nor'-westers swallowed by him in the course of his sea-faring. Walter the Doubter, again, so styled because the magnitude of his ideas kept him everlastingly in suspense—his head not being large enough to let him turn them over, and examine them on both sides; an alleged lineal descendant of the illustrious King Log; hugely endowed with the divine faculty of silence, and loving to sit with his privy council for hours together, smoking and dozing over public affairs, without speaking a word to interrupt that perfect stillness so necessary to deep reflection. Golden age of innocence and primitive blessedness! when tea-parties were marked with the utmost propriety and dignity of deportment—no flirting, or coquetting—no gambling of old ladies, or hoyden, chattering, and romping of young ones—but when the demure misses seated themselves for the evening in their rush-bottomed chairs, and knit their own woollen stockings, nor ever opened their lips, unless to say "Yah, Mynheer," or "Yah, ya Vrouw," to any question that was asked them—while the gentlemen tranquilly "blew a cloud," and seemed, one and all, lost in contemplation of the blue and white tiles of the fireplace, representing, perhaps, Tobit and his dog, or Haman swinging conspicuously on his gibbet, or Jonah manfully bouncing out of the whale, "like harlequin through a barrel of fire." Then comes William the Testy—that "universal genius"—who would have been a much better governor had he been a less learned man—who was perpetually expermientalising at the expense of the state, and reducing to practice the political schemes he had gathered from Solon and Lycurgus, and the republic of Plato and the Pandects of Justinian—who introduced the art of fighting by proclamation (an art worthy of Mr. Cobden himself), and wrought out for himself great renown by a series of mechanical inventions, such as carts that went before the horses, and patronised a race of lawyers and bum-bailiffs, and made his people exceedingly enlightened and unhappy. And lastly, we have Peter the Headstrong—tough, sturdy, valiant—weather-beaten, leathern-sided, and