University of Virginia Library

Showing the nature of History in general; containing furthermore
the universal Acquirements of William the
Testy, and how a Man may learn so much as to render
himself good for nothing.

When the lofty Thucydides is about to enter on his description
of the plague that desolated Athens, one of his

modern commentators[1] assures the reader, that his history
“is now going to be exceeding solemn, serious, and
pathetic;” and hints, with that air of chuckling gratulation,
with which a good dame draws forth a choice morsel
from a cupboard to regale a favourite, that this plague
will give his history a most agreeable variety.

In like manner did my heart leap within me, when I
came to the dolorous dilemma of Fort Good Hope, which
I at once perceived to be the forerunner of a series of
great events and entertaining disasters. Such are the
true subjects for the historic pen. For what is history in
fact, but a kind of Newgate Calendar, a register of the
crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow
men? It is a huge libel on human nature, to which we industriously
add page after page, volume after volume, as
if we were building up a monument to the honour rather
then the infamy of our species. If we turn over the pages
of these chronicles that man has written of himself, what
are the characters dignified by the appellation of great, and
held up to the admiration of posterity?—Tyrants, robbers,
conquerors, renowned only for the magnitude of their misdeeds
and the stupendous wrongs and miseries they have
inflicted on mankind—warriors, who have hired themselves
to the trade of blood, not from motives of virtuous
patriotism, or to protect the injured or defenceless, but
merely to gain the vaunted glory of being adroit and successful
in massacring their fellow beings! What are the
great events that constitute a glorious era? The fall of empires—the
desolation of happy countries—splendid cities
smoking in their ruins—the proudest works of art tumbled
in the dust—the skrieks and groans of whole nations ascending
unto heaven!

It is thus the historians may be said to thrive on the
miseries of mankind—they are like the birds of prey that
hover over the field of battle, to fatten on the mighty dead.
It was observed by a great projector of inland lock navigation,
that rivers, lakes, and oceans were only formed to
feed canals. In like manner I am tempted to believe, that
plots, conspiracies, wars, victories, and massacres are ordained
by Providence only as food for the historian.

It is a source of great delight to the philosopher in studying
the wonderful economy of nature, to trace the mutual

dependencies of things, how they are created reciprocally
for each other, and how the most noxious and
apparently unnecessary animal has it uses. Thus those
swarms of flies, which are so often execrated as useless
vermin, are created for the sustenance of spiders; and
spiders, on the other hand, are evidently made to devour
flies. So those heroes who have been such pests in the
world were bountcously provided as themes for the poet
and the historian, while the poet and historian were destined
to record the achievements of heroes!

These and many similar reflections naturally arose in
my mind as I took up my pen to commence the reign of
William Kieft; for now the stream of our history, which
hitherto has rolled in a tranquil current, is about to depart
for ever from its peaceful haunts, and brawl through
many a turbulent and rugged scene. Like some sleek ox,
which, having fed and fattened in a rich clover field, lies
sunk in luxurious repose, and will bear repeated taunts
and blows before it heaves its unwieldy limbs, and clumsily
arouses from its slumbers; so the province of the
Nieuw Nederlandts, having long thriven and grown corpulent
under the prosperous reign of the Doubter, was
reluctantly awakened to a melancholy conviction that, by
patient sufferance, its grievances had become so numerous
and aggravating, that it was preferable to repel than endure
them. The reader will now witness the manner in
which a peaceful community advances toward a state of
war; which it is too apt to approach, as a horse does a
drum, with much prancing and parade, but with little progress,
and too often with the wrong end foremost.

Wilhelmus Kieft, who, in 1634, ascended the Gubernatorial
chair, (to borrow a favourite though clumsy appellation
of modern phraseologists,) was in form, feature,
and character, the very reverse of Wouter Von Twiller,
his renowned predecessor. He was of very respectable
descent, his father being Inspector of Windmills in the
ancient town of Saardam; and our here, we are told,
made very curious investigations in the nature and operations
of those machines when a boy, which is one reason
why he afterwards came to be so ingenious a governor.
His name, according to the most ingenious etymologists,
was a corruption of Kyver, that is to say, a wrangler or
scolder, and expressed the hereditary disposition of his
family, which, for nearly two centuries, had kept the windy
town of Saardam in hot water, and produced more tartars

and brimstones, than any ten families in the place; and so
truly did Wilhelmus Kieft inherit this family endowment,
that he had scarcely been a year in the discharge of his
government, before he was universally known by the name
of William The Testy.

He was a brisk, waspish, little old gentleman, who had
dried and withered away, partly through the natural process
of years, and partly from being parched and burned
up by his fiery soul, which blazed like a vehement rushlight
in his bosom, constantly inciting him to most valorous
broils, altercations, and misadventures. I have
heard it observed by a profound and philosophical judge
of human nature, that if a woman waxes fat as she grows
old, the tenure of her life is very precarious; but if haply
she withers, she lives for ever: such likewise was the
case with William the Testy, who grew tougher in proportion
as he dried. He was some such a little Dutchman
as we may now and then see, stumping briskly about
the streets of our city, in a broad skirted coat, with buttons
nearly as large as the shield of Ajax, an old-fashioned
cocked hat stuck on the back of his head, and a cane as
high as his chin. His visage was broad, but his features
sharp; his nose turned up with a most petulant curl; his
cheeks, like the regions of Terra del Fuego, were scorched
into a dusky red—doubtless, in consequence of the neighbourhood
of two fierce little gray eyes, through which
his torrid soul beamed as fervently as a tropical sun blazing
through a pair of burning glasses. The corners of
his mouth were curiously modelled into a kind of fretwork,
not a little resembling the wrinkled proboscis of an
irritable pug dog; in a word, he was one of the most positive,
restless, ugly little men that ever put himself in a passion
about nothing.

Such were the personal endowments of William the
Testy; but it was the sterling riches of his mind that
raised him to dignity and power. In his youth he had
passed with great credit through a celebrated academy at
the Hague, noted for producing finished scholars with a
despatch unequalled, except by certain of our American
colleges, which seem to manufacture bachelors of arts by
some patent machine. Here he skirmished very smartly
on the frontiers of several of the sciences, and made so gallant
an inroad on the dead languages, as to bring off captive
a host of Greek nouns and Latin verbs, together with
divers pithy saws and apophthegms; all which he constantly

paraded in conversation and writing, with as much
vain glory as would a triumphant general of yore display
the spoils of the countries he had ravished. He had moreover
puzzled himself considerably with logic, in which he
had advanced so far as to attain a very familiar acquaintance,
by name at least, with the whole family of syllogisms
and dilemmas; but what he chiefly valued himself on was
his knowledge of metaphysics, in which having once upon
a time ventured too deeply, he came well nigh being
smothered in a slough of unintelligible learning—a fearful
peril, from the effects of which he never perfectly recovered.
In plain words, like many other profound intermeddlers
in his abstruse, bewildering science, he so confused
his brain with abstract speculations which he could
not comprehend, and artificial distinctions which he could
not realize, that he could never think clearly on any subject,
however simple, through the whole course of his life
afterwards. This, I must confess, was in some measure
a misfortune, for he never engaged in argument, of which
he was exceeding fond, but what, between logical deductions
and metaphysical jargon, he soon involved himself
and his subject in a fog of contradictions and perplexities,
and then would get into a mighty passion with his adversary,
for not being convinced gratis.

It is in knowledge as in swimming,—he who ostentatiously
sports and flounders on the surface makes more
noise and splashing, and attracts more attention than the
industrious pearl diver, who plunges in search of treasures
to the bottom. The “universal acquirements” of William
Kieft were the subject of great marvel and admiration
among his countrymen; he figured about at the
Hague with as much vain glory as does a profound Bonze
at Pekin, who has mastered half the letters of the Chinese
alphabet; and, in a word, was unanimously pronounced
a universal genius!—I have known many universal geniuses
in my time, though to speak my mind freely, I never
knew one, who, for the ordinary purposes of life, was
worth his wcight in straw; but for the purposes of government,
a little sound judgment, and plain common sense,
is worth all the sparkling genius that ever wrote poetry,
or invented theories.

Strange as it may sound, therefore, the universal acquirements
of the illustrious Wilhelmus were very much
in his way; and had he been less a learned man, it is
possible he would have been a much greater governor.

He was exceedingly fond of trying philosophical and political
experiments: and having stuffed his head full of
scraps and remnants of ancient republics, and oligarchies,
and aristocracies, and monarchies, and the laws of Solon,
and Lycurgus, and Charondas, and the imaginary commonwealth
of Plato, and the Pandects of Justinian, and
a thousand other fragments of venerable antiquity, he
was for ever bent upon introducing some one or other of
them into use; so that between one contradictory measure
and another, he entangled the government of the little
province of Nieuw Nederlandts in more knots, during
his administration, than half a dozen successors could have
untied.

No sooner had this bustling little man been blown by a
whiff of fortune into the seat of government, than he called
together his council, and delivered a very animated speech
on the affairs of the province. As every body knows
what a glorious opportunity a governor, a president, or
even an emperor has of drubbing his enemies in his speeches,
messages, and bulletins, where he has the talk all on
his own side, they may be sure the high-mettled William
Kieft did not suffer so favourable an occasion to escape
him, of evincing that gallantry of tongue common to all
able legislators. Before he commenced, it is recorded
that he took out his pocket handkerchief, and gave a very
sonorous blast of the nose, according to the usual custom
of great orators. This, in general, I believe, is intended
as a signal trumpet, to call the attention of the auditors;
but with William the Testy it boasted a more classic
cause, for he had read of the singular expedient of that famous
demagogue Caius Gracchus, who, when he harangued
the Roman populace, modulated his tones by an
oratorical flute or pitch-pipe.

This preparatory symphony being performed, he commenced
by expressing an humble sense of his own want
of talents, his utter unworthiness of the honour conferred
upon him, and his humiliating incapacity to discharge
the important duties of his new station; in short, he expressed
so contemptible an opinion of himself, that many
simple country members present, ignorant that these were
mere words of course, always used on such occasions,
were very uneasy, and even felt wrath that he should
accept an office for which he was consciously so inadequate.

He then proceeded in a manner highly classic, profoundly

erudite, and nothing at all to the purpose; being
nothing more than a pompous account of all the governments
of ancient Greece, and the wars of Rome and
Carthage, together with the rise and fall of sundry outlandish
empires, about which the assembly knew no more
than their great grandchildren who were yet unborn.
Thus having, after the manner of your learned orators,
convinced the audience that he was a man of many words
and great erudition, he at length came to the less important
part of his speech, the situation of the province; and
here he soon worked himself into a fearful rage against
the Yankees, whom he compared to the Gauls who desolated
Rome, and the Goths and Vandals who overran
the fairest plains of Europe—nor did he forget to mention,
in terms of adequate opprobrium, the insolence with
which they had encroached upon the territories of New
Netherlands, and the unparalleled audacity with which
they had commenced the town of New Plymouth, and
planted the onion patches of Weathersfield under the very
walls of Fort Goed Hoop.

Having thus artfully wrought up his tale of terror to
a climax, he assumed a self-satisfied look, and declared,
with a nod of knowing import, that he had taken measures
to put a final stop to these encroachments—that he
had been obliged to have recourse to a dreadful engine of
warfare, lately invented, awful in its effects, but authorised
by direful necessity. In a word, he was resolved to
conquer the Yankees—by proclamation.

For this purpose he had prepared a tremendous instrument
of the kind, ordering, commanding, and enjoining
the intruders aforesaid, forthwith to remove, depart, and
withdraw from the districts, regions, and territories aforesaid,
under the pain of suffering all the penalties, forfeitures,
and punishments, in such case made and provided,
&c. This proclamation, he assured them, would at once
exterminate the enemy from the face of the country; and
he pledged his valour as a governor, that within two
months after it was published, not one stone should remain
on another in any of the towns which they had
built.

The council remained for some time silent after he had
finished; whether struck dumb with admiration at the
brilliancy of his project, or put to sleep by the length of
his harangue, the history of the times deth not mention.
Suffice it to say, they at length gave a general grunt of

acquiescence; the proclamation was immediately despatched
with due ceremony, having the great seal of the province,
which was about the size of a buckwheat pancake,
attached to it by a broad red riband. Governor Keift,
having thus vented his indignation, felt greatly relieved
—adjourned the council sine die—put on his cocked hat
and corduroy small-clothes, and, mounting on a tall raw-boned
charger, trotted out to his country seat, which was
situated in a sweet, sequestered swamp, now called Dutch
Street, but more commonly known by the name of Dog's
Misery.

Here, like the good Numa, he reposed from the toils
of legislation, taking lessons in Government, not from the
Nymph Ageria, but from the honoured wife of his bosom;
who was one of that peculiar kind of females, sent
upon earth a little before the flood, as a punishment for
the sins of mankind, and commonly known by the appeallation
of knowing women. In fact, my duty as an historian
obliges me to make known a circumstance which was a
great secret at the time, and consequently was not a subject
of scandal at more than half the tea-tables of New-Amsterdam,
but which, like many other great secrets. has
leaked out in the lapse of years; and this was, that the
great Wilhelmus the Testy, though one of the most potent
little men that ever breathed, yet submitted at home
to a species of government, neither laid down in Aristotle
nor Plato; in short, it partook of the nature of a pure, unmixed
tyranny, and is familiarly denominated petticoat
government. An absolute sway, which, though exceedingly
common in these modern days, was very rare
among the ancients, if we may judge from the rout made
about the domestic economy of honest Socrates, which
is the only ancient case on record.

The great Kieft, however, warded off all the sneers
and sarcasms of his particular friends, who are ever
ready to joke with a man on sore points of the kind, by
alleging it was a government of his own election, to which
he submitted through choice; adding, at the same time, a
profound maxim which he had found in an ancient author,
that “he who would aspire to govern, should first
learn to obey.”