t brings them not the sight of the wished-for shore. I see them now,
scantily supplied with provisions, crowded almost to suffocation in
their ill-stored prison, delayed by calms, pursuing a circuitous route;
and now driven in fury before the raging tempest, on the high and giddy
wave. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging; the
laboring masts seem straining from their base; the dismal sound of the
pumps is heard; the ship leaps, as it were, madly, from billow to
billow; the ocean breaks and settles with ingulfing floods over the
floating deck, and beats with deadening, shivering weight against the
staggered vessel. I see them, escaped from these perils, pursuing their
all but desperate undertaking, and landed, at last, after a few months'
passage, on the ice-clad rocks of Plymouth,--weak and weary from the
voyage, poorly armed, scantily provisioned, without shelter, without
means, surrounded by hostile tribes.

Shut now the volume of history and tell me, on any principle of human
probability, what shall be the fate of this handful of adventurers? Tell
me, man of military science, in how many months were they all swept off
by the thirty savage tribes enumerated within the early limits of New
England? Tell me, politician, how long did this shadow of a colony, on
which your conventions and treaties had not smiled, languish on the
distant coast? Student of history, compare for me the baffled projects,
the deserted settlements, the abandoned adventures, of other times, and
find the parallel of this! Was it the winter's storm, beating upon the
houseless heads of women and children? was it hard labor and spare
meals? was it disease? was it the tomahawk? was it the deep malady of a
blighted hope, a ruined enterprise, and a broken heart, aching, in its
last moments, at the recollection of the loved and left, beyond the
sea?--was it some or all of these united, that hurried this forsaken
company to their melancholy fate? And is it possible that neither of
these causes, that not all combined, were able to blast this bud of
hope? Is it possible that from a beginning so feeble, so frail, so
worthy, not so much of admiration as of pity, there has gone forth a
progress so steady, a growth so wonderful, an expansion so ample, a
reality so important, a promise, yet to be fulfilled, so glorious?

TO ARMS

LOUIS KOSSUTH

Our fatherland is in danger. Citizens, to arms! to arms! Unless the
whole nation rise up a