erved in the
ranks at the Battle of White Plains; and then, after devoting his mind
to theology for six weeks, accepted the position of chaplain in a
Massachusetts regiment. The little knot of poets was broken up. One of
them asked in mournful numbers,--

"Amid the roar of drums and guns,
When meet again the Muses' sons?"

They met again after the thunder and lightning were over, but in another
place. New Haven saw the rising of the constellation; its meridian
brilliancy shone upon Hartford. At the close of the war, the four
poetical luminaries, as they were called by the "Connecticut Magazine
and New Haven Gazette," hung up the sword in Hartford and grasped the
lyre. The epidemic of verse broke out again. The four added to their
number Dr. Lemuel Hopkins, a physician, Richard Alsop, a gentleman of
much cultivation, and Theodore Dwight, a younger brother of Timothy.
There were now seven stars of the first magnitude. Many other aspirants
to a place in the heavens were necessarily excluded; among them, two are
worthy of notice,--Noah Webster, who was already then and there
meditating his method for teaching the American people to _mispel_, and
Oliver Wolcott, afterward Secretary of the Treasury. Bound by the sweet
influences of the Pleiades, Wolcott wrote a poem,--"The Judgment of
Paris." His biographer, who has read it, has given his critical opinion
that "it would be much worse than Barlow's epic, were it not much
shorter."

The year 1783 brought peace with England, but it found matters in a
dangerous and unsettled state at home. After seven years of revolution
it takes some time to bring a people down to the safe and sober jog-trot
of every-day life. The lower classes were demoralized by the license and
tumult of war, and by poverty; they were surly and turbulent, and showed
a disposition to shake off yokes domestic as well as foreign,--the yoke
of taxation in particular: for every man of them believed that he had
already done more, suffered more, and paid more, than his fair share.
The calamity of a worthless paper legal-tender currency added to the
general discontent. Hence any public measure involving further
disbursements met with angry opposition. Large arrears of pay were due
to soldiers, and bounties had been promised to induce them to disband
peacefully, and to compensate them for the depreciation of the currency.
Congress had also granted five years' extra pay to officers, in lieu of
the half-pay f