land's virtues. It might not answer in these days to vindicate such a habit, (for the reason it was an antique virtue, and anything surviving of virtue is hunted to death,) yet for him, (Heaven preserve his memory in a bottle of the purest, with no other poetry than "Fine old Holland,") it added certainly to his beauty, and made him rosy as the morning, when the sun rises behind a thin mist. In these days men look hedgy, and immense forests are to be cleared away ere we arrive at the plains of humanity; every fine buck looks as if he had been running through the woods and spite of effort had accumulated much hedge and brush. These days and those days bear poor comparison-then mankind in the skipping hey-day time of youth, now in the affected squeamishness of second childishness, "sans every thing;" in fine, as a youth inexperienced in the wicked ways of the world, so were the Dutchmen of those days; or as a youth sowing plentifully his wild oats on a soil delighting itself in fatness, so are the mixed-men of these days. The difference is in invention. Those Dutchmen never invented anything, because they had everything. Contentment is a chest of tools. Ten miles square was a big world to them, and they had as soon leave for the far country as go beyond the boundary line; but as soon as steam was discovered, grandmother nature took a jump, the old generation of bandy-legged Dutchmen were left behind, and she is still on a full gallop, never to stop this side of sun down to all the world. Steam-but lest the danger might be great, I shall be obliged to put it in a chapter by itself, so we will talk of that hereafter. It is a subject to be handled with iron gloves. CHAPTER V. A long, grave and learned discussion of what happened to Hans of a Christmas eve—some wanderings of his about the Old Church-curious adventures. It was a pale moonlit evening on Christmas eve, when Hans got out of his bed, (something unusual,) to take a schnap. The rays cosily darted through the crevice of the half-closed shutter, and as it partially lighted him to the cupboard, that contained his fallen angel, could not but titter at the sight. Hans took either a quadruple horn, or else the oddness of the time rendered it a very uncomfortable portion for him. He bounded out of his cotscarcely anything around him but his linen fig-leaf-he presented a figure that a painter like Hogarth would have delighted to draw. He mounted his Dutch hat with just brim enough to keep his eyes from lighting upon Heaven. He carried his long pole or "rouser" in his right hand, and in this sad plight walked about the grounds of the antique sanctuary. He wandered over the vaults, carefully reading the inscription on the slabs that covered each, skillfully leaped over the iron inclo sures as though they had not been there, and seemed at times somewhat confused. He in vain looked for the side ent rance and the antique reliques of the early piety of our ancestors that were inlaid at the rear of the building. He seemed worried, staggered some, and concluded he must be half-out of his senses, or almost intoxicated, for he acknowledged there was no difference between a lunatic and a sot in point of sense. He rubbed his eyes and his head, put on his spectacles and stood on his tips, in vain-all that he saw was blurred Dutch, though gilded English-he could no more understand English than Balaam's ass. Hans knocked at the door-no answer-again, no answer-still louder, still silence reigned. Thus barred out from the privileges to which he thought himself justly entitled, he could not conceive the reason-his pole was used to rap for admission, but obstinacy and silence only answered; suddenly he saw a light flash above the window, and quick as the flash, he knew not how and was not Yankee enough to guess, he found himself within the portals. He saw here a number of sleeping clerks, disre garding the pulpit oratory and essentially used his aid: though not accustomed to these taps of admonition, and, inay be, somewhat hard-headed, they did not so soon arouse as did the Dutchman of former times. To Hans everything was in great confusion. They had here a new dominie, a great encourager of letters-one who diffused valued information to all parts of the country. Hans knew, that to the best of his recollection, the information preached in those days in the same building seldom spread beyond the walls; it was so horribly cramped in Dutch, that so soon as it reached English or other air, it exploded. Hans tried to ́ believe the building was still in possession of the cursed English, or a prison, or a riding school, yet that being to great an effort for his brain was dropt as useless. His wit, I admit, was not very great. He was obliged to be as wary with it as a pilot who directs you through Hell-gate, for if once out of the current it is utter ruin; so Hans, when he endeavored to exceed himself; generally was obliged to lay by in a great fog, and when he came too again found how great were his errors. His wit, like the will of the wisp, led him into so many ditches and quag. mires that he at last gave up pursuing the bent of humor. Where was the old pulpit-preached away? Yonder, said Hans, still hangs the hook, underneath which has been preached the bona fide truth, which if people don't understand, it was because they did not understand Dutch; and ignorant of that, they deserved * * * for all they will receive. Where is the old cushioned and curtained pew the mayor and corporation? Ah! the aldermen of those days were moderate men. Turtle soup had not yet drowned their reason it was not then invented. Wine was a rarity, and tea-rooms a century in futurity. Now! Oh for the lash of a poet to stripe the back of this generation! Now the first bu-, siness the corporation transacts at its sittings, is eating turtle soup and drinking tea-the last turtle-soup and tea, without even grace. Men wonder that aldermen grow so fast. The wonder is why some of them cannot outstride Collosus. Eating and drinking are performed in great varieties by the people, and why should not the corporation profit by such an example ? No such awful looking object as a turtle is mentioned by Hans. I do not know that they even had soup in those days. Dutch soup! How risible the idea! It fairly titters in one's thoughts. Dutch turtles! I don't believe in them. Who ever saw a Hollander eat a turtle. It looks for all the world like an overgrown oyster in agony, tired of confinement; by hard working he has let out his hands and legs, and so savage in his disappointment in (not being able to crawl out, that he snaps at you--the very thing that a Dutchman despises. His disposition is made of the pure cream of the milk of human kindness. He neither curdles with age nor sours with affliction. His face is as free from storms as an Egyptian sky. As for tears he never shed them, did nothing with regret, and blessed Heaven for every dispensation of Providence, good or evil, and though poor indeed in the ordinary world's wealth, yet he desired more the wealth of bet. ter worlds. Hans looked in vain for the old money collectors with their wooden boxes-honest friends, that returned to the treasury the last farthing. They were good boxes, that did good service to the poor. They are banished and the silver plates, each enough in themselves to relieve a famishing heart, reign in their stead. Where the old bell that had hung so fairly upon the church from youth up? where the Donimies that could so heartily preach in Dutch? where? all gone! None left to commemorate the church of our forefathers! As we look around upon the lofty stores that seem to rise, as it were, to frown down this glorious edifice, (alas, they have succeeded,) we see the building partaking somewhat of the opposition of the old sires, and, raising its back by way of returning the frown. See how it rises above its walls, and though it is covered over with paint and patches of pretended improvement, yet a Dutchman's eyes raises the curtain, and to him appears the glorious edifice, bright and fair as in the days of its prosperity. Think of it! The old church once controlled by the government of little Holland; now we are obliged to submit and listen to the missionaries, (all pious men and good preachers,) sent us by the Washington Society for the cultivation and spread of letters. Miserable exchange-for there is more real eloquence in the sound of one word of the old language, than a thousand sentences harangued by these earnest missionaries. Dreadful times when a man must weigh his words and say nothing beyond a halfounce of wit or scandal under the penalty of the law and pay five pence for it. What an abridgment of speech! The English language fairly lopped off! Will Dutchmen submit to this? The spirit of Hans replies sternly, No! More vainly than all did Hans look around for the old sires, who dignified the inner temple. Where were they? Dutchmen in those days were patented for virtue and honesty; now no portion of mankind is worth a patent. They grow up, apparently, spontaneously like weeds, and cover the lands as did the locusts of Egypt. A man in those days had something to set a value upon. His short, tight breeches of buckskin fairly took hold of his limbs, as if they loved him; his cocked hat, rested over him as tenderly |