orious recollections; he had seen Caesar, and
heard Cicero. But who shall conjure with Saugus or Cato Four
Corners,--with Israel Putnam or Return Jonathan Meigs? We have been
transplanted, and for us the long hierarchical succession of history is
broken. The Past has not laid its venerable hands upon us in
consecration, conveying to us that mysterious influence whose force is
in its continuity. We are to Europe as the Church of England to her of
Rome. The latter old lady may be the Scarlet Woman, or the Beast with
ten horns, if you will, but hers are all the heirlooms, hers that vast
spiritual estate of tradition, nowhere yet everywhere, whose revenues
are none the less fruitful for being levied on the imagination. We may
claim that England's history is also ours, but it is a _de jure_, and
not a _de facto_ property that we have in it,--something that may be
proved indeed, yet is a merely intellectual satisfaction, and does not
savor of the realty. Have we not seen the mockery crown and sceptre of
the exiled Stuarts in St. Peter's? the medal struck so lately as 1784
with its legend, HEN IX MAG BRIT ET HIB REX, whose contractions but
faintly typify the scantness of the fact?

As the novelist complains that our society wants that sharp contrast of
character and costume which comes of caste, so in the narrative of our
historians we miss what may be called background and perspective, as if
the events and the actors in them failed of that cumulative interest
which only a long historical entail can give. Relatively, the crusade of
Sir William Pepperell was of more consequence than that of St. Louis,
and yet forgive us, injured shade of the second American baronet, if we
find the narrative of Joinville more interesting than your despatches to
Governor Shirley. Relatively, the insurrection of that Daniel whose
Irish patronymic Shea was euphonized into Shays, as a set-off for the
debasing of French _chaise_ into _shay_, was more dangerous than that of
Charles Edward; but for some reason or other (as vice sometimes has the
advantage of virtue) the latter is more enticing to the imagination, and
the least authentic relic of it in song or story has a relish denied to
the painful industry of Minot. Our events seem to fall short of that
colossal proportion which befits the monumental style. Look grave as we
will, there is something ludicrous in Counsellor Keane's pig being the
pivot of a revolution. We are of yesterday, and it is to n