the Phoenician colonies, or of those days when, “sitting on some pleasant lea," the Etrurian shepherd

"Had sight of Proteus rising from the sea,

Or heard old Triton blow his wreathed horn!"

It is mainly in the fact that we know every thing of primary importance about our origin, that the course of our career differs most from that of other nations. The acorn that was planted within the memory of man, has towered into a deeprooted oak in days when the pen is in every hand; and instead of following with uncertain eye the wandering track of some Phoenician barque or Viking's galley, instead of poring over the dubious inscriptions of the Skald's Saga or an Etruscan tomb, the historian of the United States is as the historian of yesterday. Then, the nation spoke as a child, and it saw as a child, and its future was but visible through a glass, darkly; but in two centuries the child has shot up into vigorous manhood, and few could have foreseen, in its infancy, the advent of the triumphs that have enwreathed its brows.

For, in truth, its germs were of but little worth in the eyes of any contemporaneous human observer. The departure of the emigrants-whether animated by hatred of oppression, love of adventure, or longing after lucre—was scarce observed in Europe; nor did their arrival in America attract the attention of any but a nation of savages. Every thing in the early annals of the Colonies (considered without reference to results which could not then have been calculated upon) bears the stamp of insignificance. The population was small and scattered; the governments weak; the legislation trifling; the battles but skirmishes; the treaties mere bargains. The first symptom of emergence from their original obscurity was the selection, by the two rival empires of the Old World, of the soil of the New as the arena wherein to grapple, in the death-struggle, for the privilege of possessing that which belonged to neither. The union of the Colonies, for the purpose of resisting the authority of Great Britain, was followed by a series of events, certainly interesting in the highest degree to the parties concerned, but not perhaps, per se, of the most striking character. A few battles, in which, compared even with the European annals of the present century, the contending forces were

small, and the military genius of the generals not superlatively great; numerous debates, enlivened by very little eloquence; and a few negotiations, which their result alone preserves from oblivion. The peace succeeded, and the acknowledgment of our independence by Great Britain - not extorted, but yielded -the consequence rather of a want of energy and inclination in the ministry, than of a lack of power in the nation. A few years of feeble, precarious, unhonored existence were dragged on, until at length an end was put to the long period of our impotence and obscurity by the adoption of the Federal Constitution. Prosperity soon followed, bringing greatness in its train.

To affirm the insignificance of these transactions in themselves, is not necessarily to depreciate the reputation or the abilities of the men who effected them, or to deny their claims upon our gratitude and our admiration. To say the least, they not only did all that patriotism or virtue could suggest, but the result shows that they did all that was required; and we have every reason to be thankful that it was so, and that there was neither temptation nor opportunity for the soldier of these days to seek

"to wade through slaughter to a throne, Or shut the gates of mercy on mankind."

But the subsequent stupendous growth and ever augmenting grandeur of their country, have reflected back distinction, and given their deeds an importance not their own. They shine with a borrowed light; for, though there were giants in those days, yet we must not forget "vixêre fortes ante Agamemnona;" and in this spirit, it is pleasant to observe with what filial piety this generation seeks to perpetuate the memory of its ancestors and their achievements.

"Still green with bays each ancient altar stands."

Every town now has its chronicler; nay, scarce a family, sprung from the prolific loins of an early settler, but finds its ramifications carefully collected, till it is traced back to the sturdy Dissenter, or non-jurant Quaker averse to arms, who gave to his race upon this side of the ocean "a local habitation and a name."

Following the train of thought induced by our opening re

flections, our pen has led us very far astray from the point whence we started; but we have said enough, we hope, to justify the spirit that has impelled us to endeavor to throw some little additional light upon a passage in our national history, in itself comparatively obscure. "Let not ambition mock their humble toil," who bring even their mite to the treasury of knowledge. Every contribution of learning, every new elucidation of a fact previously unknown or misknown, has its value. It is like a solitary book, useless, perhaps, by itself; but, placed in a public library, it may serve to complete and make perfect a series that will remain forever for the benefit of mankind. To say our say about the Society of the Cincinnati; whence it arose; how it has prospered; and what has become of it, may serve to bring together before our readers some little information not uninteresting in itself, and gleaned from sources not readily accessible to the public generally. And in so doing, we will not be unmindful of the wise words which a great humorist puts into the mouth of one of his personages. "Bélier, mon ami," said Moulineau the Giant to his friend the great Ram, " Bélier, mon ami, si tu voulois bien commencer par le commencement, tu me ferois plaisir; car tous ces récits qui commencent par le milieu ne font que m'embrouiller l'imagination." We will follow the astute Moulineau's suggestion, (though he was but a scurvy fellow of an Anakim, after all,) and begin at the beginning. And as the grave and veracious Diedrich Knickerbocker commences his history of the Nieuw Nederlandts with a learned disquisition, many pages long, containing divers ingenious theories and philosophic speculations concerning the cosmogony and the general population of this earth, down to the period when "that worthy and irrecoverable discoverer" Hendrick Hudson, in the good ship Half-Moon, left the flat shores of Holland, - we will preface our remarks upon the last chivalric order that arose in America, with a brief sketch of the institutions of knighthoo that preceded it.

When we are told of orders of chivalry and knighthood, the idea in our mind is generally that of some steel-clad cavalier or red-cross knight, like Sir Amadis de Gaul or Godfrey of Boulogne, whose chief employment consists in maltreating

the Paynim, slaying giants, circumventing caitiff enchanters, and triumphantly rescuing and wedding distressed damsels. Whether our first impressions of these gentry are derived from Sir Walter or from Ariosto, from Percy or from Froissart, we still look upon them almost as mere creations of the brain, or, at best, as something with which we in this country could never, by the remotest chance, have had any thing to do. And yet, more than one knightly order has sprung from our own soil, and filled its ranks from our own people. We do not allude to the absurd colonial government devised for Carolina, with its burgraves and palatines and margraves; but to regular formal orders of knighthood, with objects, insignia, and appellations peculiarly local and American. But nothing of the marvellous is to be looked for in the records of their history. Our knights, like those of all recent European orders, were but modern imitations of those of Arthur's Court;

"Dinadam with lively glance,

And Lanval with the fairy lance,

And Mordred with his look askance,

Brunor and Belvidere."

Nor did their deeds at all resemble those of the Round Table, where, according to Roger Ascham, "they be counted the noblest knights that do kill most men without any quarrell, and commit foulest adultries by sutlest shiftes." No; our lions, like Nick Bottom's in the play, shall roar you as gently as any sucking dove; there shall be nothing to frighten the ladies. About the year 1710, "to the extraordinary benefit of Virginia," as old Beverley says, Colonel Alexander Spotswood was appointed governor of that colony. A gentleman, a soldier, a statesman, and a patriot, his foreseeing eye at once perceived the policy of preventing the encroachments of the French by a line of posts between the Appalachian chain and the western waters. In the popular mind of those days, those mountains were regarded as the invincible barrier of the gloomy wilderness beyond, against the advances of civilization. "Their great height, their prodigious extent, their rugged and horrid appearance, suggested to the imagination undefined images of terror. The wolf, the bear, the panther, and the Indian were the tenants of these forlorn and inaccessible

precipices." The failure of Sir William Berkeley's attempt to effect a passage across them had not at all tended to diminish the general apprehension with which the enterprise was regarded; and it remained for Governor Spotswood, with great pomp and circumstance, at the head of a numerous and wellappointed array of the most considerable of the colonial gentry, to vanquish the imaginary difficulties that had been raised by the fears of the populace, and to return, according to the history of the times, "with a glory little inferior to that of Hannibal." To encourage his designs, and to familiarize the minds of men with the passage of the formidable Blue Ridge, he instituted an order of knighthood in commemoration of this achievement, of which he, as the representative of the crown, was the head. The adventurous cavalier, ambitious of winning distinction, was required, as his maiden feat of derring do, to carry his arms to a certain distance beyond the Alleghanies; and to do this he was solemnly sworn, on receiving his accolade as a knight of the most noble and military order of the Golden Horseshoe. The device of this order was a miniature golden horseshoe; the motto,

"Sic juvat transcendere montes;"

and we are told that, by royal permission, these insignia were actually added to Spotswood's own armorial achievements. Such are the traditions of the country; but we must add that we cannot at present cite any other authority than the loose statements of Howe; and we doubt very much whether there is any family of Spotswood at this day in Great Britain which bears the emblems we have described. Nor is history more communicative as to the subsequent fate of the first knights of this military order. But the whole story has a pleasant spice of romance about it, that causes us to cherish it as possibly true, until we have irrefragable proof that it is false. Perhaps, after all, a not less interesting memorial of Spotswood's fame exists in the fact, that he was the first iron-master in America who erected a regular furnace.

The only account we have of " The Albion Knights of the Conversion of the Twenty-three Indian Kings" is in the less apocryphal than rare description of the Province of New