dmits you
with all the suspicion of a miser, and all the reluctance of an
antiquated beauty retired to replenish her charms. Bred up in
antediluvian notions, she has not yet acquired the European taste
of receiving visitants in her dressing-room; she locks and bolts
up her private recesses with extraordinary care, as if not only
resolved to preserve her hoards, but to conceal her age, and hide
the remains of a face that was young and lovely in the days of
Adam. He that would view nature in her undress, and partake of her
internal treasures, must proceed with the resolution of a robber,
if not a ravisher. She gives no invitation to follow her to the
caverns: the external earth makes no proclamation of the internal
stores, but leaves to chance and industry the discovery of the
whole. In such gifts as nature can annually recreate she is noble
and profuse, and entertains the whole world with the interest of
her fortunes, but watches over the capital with the care of a
miser. Her gold and jewels lie concealed in the earth in caves of
utter darkness; the hoards of wealth, heaps upon heaps, mould in
the chests, like the riches of the necromancer's cell. It must be
very pleasant to an adventurous speculatist to make excursions
into these gothic regions, and in his travels he may possibly come
to a cabinet, locked up in some rocky vault, whose treasures shall
reward his toil, and enable him to shine, on his return, as
splendidly as nature herself."

* * * * *

The massacre of Lexington takes place the 19th of April, this year.
Paine had been but a few months in America. Franklin is in the middle of
the Atlantic, on his way home. He arrives in May, and the _Declaration
of Independence_ is now in existence, but only conceived in thought. It
will have to bide its time, locked up there in the brain; besides,
events are yet to happen which shall be put in it, and the country is
not yet prepared for it. The people have no unanimity of sentiment.
Congress is weak and trifling; it wants reconciliation, and permits the
British to land troops, to destroy the liberties of the people, and to
steal the powder of the colonies. The country must be roused to
sentiments of patriotism, and the magazines must be filled with powder,
to support the Declaration of Independence, before it appears to the
world.

Mr. Paine now sets about the work. He wishes the American peo