The Red Rover | Page 3

the mouth of a soldier of the carpet; it was under this infatuation that Burgoyne gave, in the Commons of England, that memorable promise of marching from Quebec to Boston, with a force he saw fit to name--a pledge that he afterwards redeemed by going over the same ground, with twice the number of followers, as captives; and it was under this infatuation that England subsequently threw away her hundred thousand lives, and lavished her hundred millions of treasure.
The history of that memorable struggle is familiar to every American. Content with the knowledge that his country triumphed, he is willing to let the glorious result take its proper place in the pages of history. He sees that her empire rests on a broad and natural foundation, which needs no support from venal pens; and, happily for his peace of mind, no less than for his character, he feels that the prosperity of the Republic is not to be sought in the degradation of surrounding nations.
Our present purpose leads us back to the period of calm which preceded the storm of the Revolution. In the early days of the month of October 1759, Newport, like every other town in America, was filled with the mingled sentiment of grief and joy. The inhabitants mourned the fall of Wolfe while they triumphed in his victory. Quebec, the strong-hold of the Canadas, and the last place of any importance held by a people whom they had been educated to believe were their natural enemies, had just changed its masters. That loyalty to the Crown of England, which endured so much before the strange principle became extinct, was then at its height; and probably the colonist was not to be found who did not, in some measure, identify his own honour with the fancied glory of the head of the house of Brunswick. The day on which the action of our tale commences had been expressly set apart to manifest the sympathy of the good people of the town, and its vicinity, in the success of the royal arms. It had opened, as thousands of days have opened since, with the ringing of bells and the firing of cannon; and the population had, at an early hour, poured into the streets of the place, with that determined zeal in the cause of merriment, which ordinarily makes preconcerted joy so dull an amusement. The chosen orator of the day had exhibited his eloquence, in a sort of prosaic monody in praise of the dead hero, and had sufficiently manifested his loyalty, by laying the glory, not only of that sacrifice, but all that had been reaped by so many thousands of his brave companions also, most humbly at the foot of the throne.
Content with these demonstrations of their allegiance the inhabitants began to retire to their dwellings as the sun settled towards those immense regions which then lay an endless and unexplored wilderness but which now are teeming with the fruits and enjoyments of civilized life. The countrymen from the environs, and even from the adjoining main were beginning to turn their faces towards their distant homes, with that frugal care which still distinguishes the inhabitants of the country even in the midst of their greatest abandonment to pleasures, in order that the approaching evening might not lead them into expenditures which were not deemed germain to the proper feelings of the occasion. In short, the excess of the hour was past, and each individual was returning into the sober channels of his ordinary avocations, with an earnestness and discretion which proved he was not altogether unmindful of the time that had been squandered in the display of a spirit that he already appeared half disposed to consider a little supererogatory.
The sounds of the hammer, the axe, and the saw were again heard in the place; the windows of more than one shop were half opened, as if its owner had made a sort of compromise between his interests and his conscience; and the masters of the only three inns in the town were to be seen standing before their doors, regarding the retiring countrymen with eyes that plainly betrayed they were seeking customers among a people who were always much more ready to sell than to buy. A few noisy and thoughtless seamen, belonging to the vessels in the haven, together with some half dozen notorious tavern-hunters were, however, the sole fruits of all their nods of recognition, inquiries into the welfare of wives and children, and, in some instances, of open invitations to alight and drink.
Worldly care, with a constant, though sometimes an oblique, look at the future state, formed the great characteristic of all that people who then dwelt in what were called the provinces of New-England. The business of the day, however,