faith with the credulous and ignorant at a
distance. This truth is just as apparent to-day, in connection with
the prodigies of the republic, as it then was in connection with those
distant rulers, whose merits it was always safe to applaud, and whose
demerits it was treason to reveal. It is a consequence of this mental
dependence, that public opinion is so much placed at the mercy of the
designing; and the world, in the midst of its idle boasts of knowledge
and improvement, is left to receive its truths, on all such points as
touch the interests of the powerful and managing, through such a medium,
and such a medium only, as may serve the particular views of those who
pull the wires. Pressed upon by the subjects of France, who were then
encircling the British colonies with a belt of forts and settlements
that completely secured the savages for allies, it would have been
difficult to say whether the Americans loved the English more than
they hated the French; and those who then lived probably would have
considered the alliance which took place between the cis-Atlantic
subjects and the ancient rivals of the British crown, some twenty
years later, as an event entirely without the circle of probabilities.
Disaffection was a rare offence; and, most of all, would treason, that
should favor France or Frenchmen, have been odious in the eyes of the
provincials. The last thing that Mabel would suspect of Jasper was the
very crime with which he now stood secretly charged; and if others near
her endured the pains of distrust, she, at least, was filled with the
generous confidence of a woman. As yet no whisper had reached her ear
to disturb the feeling of reliance with which she had early regarded the
young sailor, and her own mind would have been the last to suggest
such a thought of itself. The pictures of the past and of the
present, therefore, that exhibited themselves so rapidly to her active
imagination, were unclouded with a shade that might affect any in whom
she felt an interest; and ere she had mused, in the manner related, a
quarter of an hour, the whole scene around her was filled with unalloyed
satisfaction.

The season and the night, to represent them truly, were of a nature to
stimulate the sensations which youth, health, and happiness are wont to
associate with novelty. The weather was warm, as is not always the case
in that region even in summer, while the air that came off the land, in
breathing currents, brought