reached
London. Although the gazette and national pride had, in a degree,
lessened the characteristics of this most remarkable of all similar
combats, by exaggerating the numbers of the colonists engaged, and
lessening the loss of the royal troops, the impression produced by the
news is said to have been greater than any known to that age. It had
been the prevalent opinion of England--an opinion that was then general
in Europe, and which descended even to our own times--that the animals
of the new continent, man included, had less courage and physical force,
than those of the old; and astonishment, mingled with the forebodings of
the intelligent, when it was found that a body of ill-armed countrymen
had dared to meet, in a singularly bloody combat, twice their number of
regular troops, and that, too, under the guns of the king's shipping and
batteries. Rumours, for the moment, were rife in London, and the
political world was filled with gloomy anticipations of the future.

On the morning of the day alluded to, Westminster Abbey, as usual, was
open to the inspection of the curious and interested. Several parties
were scattered among its aisles and chapels, some reading the
inscriptions on the simple tablets of the dead which illustrate a
nation, in illustrating themselves; others listening to the names of
princes who derived their consequence from their thrones and alliances;
and still other sets, who were wandering among the more elaborate
memorials that have been raised equally to illustrate insignificance,
and to mark the final resting-places of more modern heroes and
statesmen. The beauty of the weather had brought out more visiters than
common, and not less than half-a-dozen equipages were in waiting, in and
about Palace Yard. Among others, one had a ducal coronet. This carriage
did not fail to attract the attention that is more than usually bestowed
on rank, in England. All were empty, however, and more than one party of
pedestrians entered the venerable edifice, rejoicing that the view of a
duke or a duchess, was to be thrown in, among the other sights,
gratuitously. All who passed on foot, however, were not influenced by
this vulgar feeling; for, one group went by, that did not even cast a
glance at the collection of carriages; the seniors of the party being
too much accustomed to such things to lend them a thought, and the
juniors too full of anticipations of what they were about to see, to
think of other matter