Other similar memorials of the infancy of thecountry are to be found, scattered through what is now deemed the verycentre of American civilization, affording the plainest proofs that allwe possess of security from invasion and hostile violence is the growthof but little more than the time that is frequently fulfilled by asingle human life. It is matter of history that the settlements on theeastern shores of the Hudson, such as Claverack, Kinderhook, and evenPoughkeepsie, were not regarded as safe from Indian incursions a centurysince and there is still standing on the banks of the same river, andwithin musket-shot of the wharves of Albany, a residence of a youngerbranch of the Van Rensselaers, that has loopholes constructed fordefence against the same crafty enemy, although it dates from a periodscarcely so distant. This glance into the perspective of the past will prepare the reader tolook at the pictures we are about to sketch, with less surprise than hemight otherwise feel and a few additional explanations may carry himback in imagination to the precise condition of society that we desireto delineate. Thus, what seemsvenerable by an accumulation of changes is reduced to familiarity whenwe come seriously to consider it solely in connection with time.
Although New York alone possesses a populationmaterially exceeding that of either of the four smallest kingdoms ofEurope, or materially exceeding that of the entire Swiss Confederation,it is little more than two centuries since the Dutch commenced theirsettlement, rescuing the region from the savage state.
When themind reverts to the earliest days of colonial history, the period seemsremote and obscure, the thousand changes that thicken along the linksof recollections, throwing back the origin of the nation to a day sodistant as seemingly to reach the mists of time and yet four lives ofordinary duration would suffice to transmit, from mouth to mouth, in theform of tradition, all that civilized man has achieved within thelimits of the republic. In no other way can we account for thevenerable air that is already gathering around American annals. Thus, hewho has travelled far and seen much is apt to fancy that he has livedlong and the history that most abounds in important incidents soonestassumes the aspect of antiquity. On the human imagination events produce the effects of time. There is society where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal"
"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore.
0 kommentar(er)
