The Red Rover eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 600 pages of information about The Red Rover.

The Red Rover eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 600 pages of information about The Red Rover.
blood.  Self-esteem gave value to the opinions of fools.  It was under this soothing infatuation that veterans were heard to disgrace their noble profession, by boastings that should have been hushed in the mouth of a soldier of the carpet; it was under this infatuation that Burgoyne gave, in the Commons of England, that memorable promise of marching from Quebec to Boston, with a force he saw fit to name—­a pledge that he afterwards redeemed by going over the same ground, with twice the number of followers, as captives; and it was under this infatuation that England subsequently threw away her hundred thousand lives, and lavished her hundred millions of treasure.

The history of that memorable struggle is familiar to every American.  Content with the knowledge that his country triumphed, he is willing to let the glorious result take its proper place in the pages of history.  He sees that her empire rests on a broad and natural foundation, which needs no support from venal pens; and, happily for his peace of mind, no less than for his character, he feels that the prosperity of the Republic is not to be sought in the degradation of surrounding nations.

Our present purpose leads us back to the period of calm which preceded the storm of the Revolution.  In the early days of the month of October 1759, Newport, like every other town in America, was filled with the mingled sentiment of grief and joy.  The inhabitants mourned the fall of Wolfe while they triumphed in his victory.  Quebec, the strong-hold of the Canadas, and the last place of any importance held by a people whom they had been educated to believe were their natural enemies, had just changed its masters.  That loyalty to the Crown of England, which endured so much before the strange principle became extinct, was then at its height; and probably the colonist was not to be found who did not, in some measure, identify his own honour with the fancied glory of the head of the house of Brunswick.  The day on which the action of our tale commences had been expressly set apart to manifest the sympathy of the good people of the town, and its vicinity, in the success of the royal arms.  It had opened, as thousands of days have opened since, with the ringing of bells and the firing of cannon; and the population had, at an early hour, poured into the streets of the place, with that determined zeal in the cause of merriment, which ordinarily makes preconcerted joy so dull an amusement.  The chosen orator of the day had exhibited his eloquence, in a sort of prosaic monody in praise of the dead hero, and had sufficiently manifested his loyalty, by laying the glory, not only of that sacrifice, but all that had been reaped by so many thousands of his brave companions also, most humbly at the foot of the throne.

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The Red Rover from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.