ington thought that the
game was "pretty well up," Paine began to write the series of pamphlets
afterwards collected under the title of _The American Crisis_. They did
for the American volunteers what Rouget de Lisle's immortal song did for
the French levies in the revolutionary wars, what Koerner's martial
ballads did for the German patriots in the Napoleonic wars. These superb
pages of exhortation were read in every camp to the disheartened men;
their courage commanded victory. Burke himself wrote nothing finer than
the opening sentences of the first "crisis," a trumpet call indeed, but
phrased by an artist who knew the science of compelling music from
brass:--

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the
sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his
country; but he that stands it now, deserves the thanks of man and
woman. Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this
consolation with us, that the harder the conflict the more glorious the
triumph. What we obtain too cheap we esteem too lightly; it is dearness
only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper
price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an
article as freedom should not be highly rated."

"Common-sense" Paine was now the chief of the moral forces behind the
fighting Republic, and his power of thinking boldly and stating clearly
drove it forward to its destiny under the leadership of men whom Nature
had gifted with less trenchant minds. He was in succession Foreign
Secretary to Congress and clerk to the Pennsylvania Assembly, and we
find him converting despair into triumph by the magic of self-sacrifice.
He it was who in 1780 saved the finances of the war in a moment of
despair, by starting the patriotic subscription with the gift of his own
salary, and in 1781 proved his diplomatic gift in a journey to Paris by
obtaining money-aid from the French Court.

Paine might have settled down to enjoy his fame, after the war, on the
little property which the State of New York gave him. He loathed
inaction and escaped middle age. In 1787 he returned to England, partly
to carry his pen where the work of liberation called for it, partly to
forward his mechanical inventions. Paine, self-educated though he was,
was a capable mathematician, and he followed the progress of the applied
sciences with passion. His inventions include a long list of things
partl