I take boxes for them at the theatre, go shopping with them, supply them with bouquets, and furnish them with novels from the circulating library. In consequence of these attentions I am become a great favourite, and there is seldom a party going on in the city without my having an invitation. The grievance I have to mention is the exchange of hats which takes place on these occasions, for, to speak my mind freely, there are certain young gentlemen who seem to consider fashionable parties as mere places to barter old clothes: and I am informed, that a number of them manage by this great system of exchange to keep their crowns decently covered witout their hatters suffering in the least by it.

It was but lately that I went to a private ball with a new hat, and on returning in the latter part of the evening, and asking for it, the scoundrel of a servant, with a broad grin, informed me that the new hats had been dealt out half-an-hour since, and they were then on the third quality; and I was in the end obliged to borrow a young lady's beaver rather than go home with any of the ragged remnants that were left.

Now I would wish to know if there is any possibility of having these offenders punished by law; and whether it would not be advisable for ladies to mention in their cards of invitation, as a postscript, "Stealing hats and shawls positively prohibited."--At any rate, I would thank you, Mr. Evergreen, to discountenance the thing totally, by publishing in your paper that stealing a hat is no joke. Your humble servant,

WALTER WITHERS.

SHOWING THE NATURE OF HISTORY IN GENERAL: CONTAINING FURTHERMORE THE UNIVERSAL ACQUIREMENTS OF WILLIAM THE TESTY, AND HOW A MAN MAY LEARN SO MUCH AS TO RENDER HIMSELF GOOD FOR NOTHING.

WHEN the lofty Thucydides is about to enter on his description of the plague that desolated Athens, one of his modern commentators assures the reader, that his history "is now going to be exceedingly solemn, serious, and pathetic;' and hints, with that air of chuckling gratulation with which a good dame draws forth a choice morsel from a cupboard to regale a favourite, that this plague will give his history a most agreeable variety.

In like manner did my heart leap within me, when I came to the dolorous dilemma of Fort Good Hope, which I at once perceived to be the forerunner of a series of great events and entertaining disasters. Such are the true subjects for the historic pen. For what is history, in fact, but a kind of Newgate Calender, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow men. It is a huge libel on human nature, to which we industriously add page after page, volume after volume, as if we were building up a monument to the honour rather than the infamy of our species. If we turn over the pages of these chronicles that man has written of himself, what are the characters dignified by the appellation of great, and held up to the admiration of posterity? -Tyrants, robbers, conquerors, renowned only

for the magnitude of their misdeeds and the stupendous wrongs and miseries they have inflicted on mankind-warriors, who have hired themselves to the trade of blood, not from motives of virtuous patriotism, or to protect the injured or defenceless, but merely to gain the vaunted glory of being adroit and successful in massacring their fellow beings! What are the great events that constitute a glorious era? The fall of empires the desolation of happy countries-splendid cities smoking in their ruins-the proudest works of art tumbled in the dust-the shrieks and groans of whole nations ascending unto heaven!

It is thus the historians may be said to thrive on the miseries of mankind-they are like the birds of prey that hover over the field of battle, to fatten on the mighty dead. It was observed by a great projector of inland lock navigation, that rivers, lakes, and oceans were only formed to feed canals. In like manner I am tempted to believe, that plots, conspiracies, wars, victories, and massacres are ordained by providence only as food for the historian.

It is a source of great delight to the philosopher, in studying the wonderful economy of nature, to trace the mutual dependencies of things, how they are created reciprocally for each other, and how the most noxious and apparently unnecessary animal has its uses. Thus those swarms of flies, which are so often execrated as useless vermin, are created for the sustenance of spiders! and spiders, on the other hand, are evidently made to devour flies. So those heroes who have been such pests in the

world were bounteously provided as themes for the poet and the historian, while the poet and the historian were destined to record the achievements of heroes!

These and many similar reflections naturally arose in my mind as I took up my pen to commence the reign of William Kieft: for now the stream of our history, which hitherto has rolled in a tranquil current, is about to depart for ever from its peaceful haunts, and brawl through many a turbulent and rugged scene. Like some sleek ox, which, having fed and fattened in a rich clover field, lies sunk in luxurious repose, and will bear repeated taunts and blows before it heaves its unwieldy limbs, and clumsily arouses from its slumbers; so the province of the Nieuw Nederlandts, having long thriven and grown corpulent under the prosperous reign of the Doubter, was reluctantly awakened to a melancholy conviction that, by patient sufferance, its grievances had become so numerous and aggravating, that it was preferable to repel than endure them. The reader will now witness the manner in which a peaceful community advances toward a state of war; which it is too apt to approach, as a horse does a drum, with much prancing and parade, but with little progress, and too often with the wrong end foremost.

WILHELMUS KIEFT, who in 1634 ascended the Gubernatorial chair (to borrow a favourite though clumsy appellation of modern phraseologists), was in form, feature, and character, the very reverse of Wouter Van Twiller, his renowned prede

cessor.

He was of very respectable descent, his father being Inspector of Windmills in the ancient town of Saardam: and our hero, we are told, made very curious investigations in the nature and operations of those machines when a boy, which is one reason why he afterwards came to be so ingenious a governor. His name, according to the most ingenious etymologists, was a corruption of Kyver, that is to say, a wrangler or scolder, and expressed the hereditary disposition of his family, which, for nearly two centuries, had kept the windy town of Saardam in hot water, and produced more tartars and brimstones than any ten families in the place; and so truly did Wilhelmus Kieft inherit this family endowment that he had scarcely been a year in the discharge of his government, before he was universally known by the name of WILLIAM THE TESTY.

He was a brisk, waspish, little old gentleman, who had dried and withered away, partly through the natural process of years, and partly from being parched and burned up by his fiery soul, which blazed like a vehement rushlight in his bosom, constantly inciting him to most valorous broils, altercations, and misadventures. I have heard it observed by a profound and philosophical judge of human nature, that if a woman waxes fat as she grows old, the tenure of her life is very precarious; but if haply she withers, she lives for ever: such likewise was the case with William the Testy, who grew tougher in proportion as he dried. He was just such a little Dutchman as we may now and then see, stumping briskly about