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=George Bancroft, 1800-.= (Manual, pp. 487, 491, 531.)
From the "History of the United States."
=129.= VIRGINIA AND ITS INHABITANTS IN EARLY TIMES.
The genial climate and transparent atmosphere delighted those who had come from the denser air of England. Every object in nature was new and wonderful. The loud and frequent thunder-storms were phenomena that had been rarely witnessed in the colder summers of the north; the forests, majestic in their growth, and free from underwood, deserved admiration for their unrivalled magnificence; the purling streams and the frequent rivers, flowing between alluvial banks, quickened the ever-pregnant soil into an unwearied fertility; the strangest and the most delicate flowers grew familiarly in the fields; the woods were replenished with sweet barks and odors; the gardens matured the fruits of Europe, of which the growth was invigorated and the flavor improved by the activity of the virgin mould. Especially the birds, with their gay plumage and varied melodies, inspired delight; every traveller expressed his pleasure in listening to the mocking-bird, which carolled a thousand several tunes, imitating and excelling the notes of all its rivals. The humming-bird, so brilliant in its plumage, and so delicate in its form, quick in motion, yet not fearing the presence of man, hunting about the flowers like the bee gathering honey, rebounding from the blossoms into which it dips its bill, and as soon returning "to renew its addresses to its delightful objects," was ever admired as the smallest and the most beautiful of the feathered race. The rattlesnake, with the terrors of its alarms and the power of its venom; the opossum, soon to become as celebrated for the care of its offspring as the fabled pelican: the noisy frog, booming from the shallows like the English bittern; the flying squirrel; the myriads of pigeons, darkening the air with the immensity of their flocks, and, as men believed, breaking with their weight the boughs of trees on which they alighted,—were all honored with frequent commemoration, and became the subjects of the strangest tales. The concurrent relation of all the Indians justified the belief that, within ten days journey towards the setting of the sun, there was a country where gold might be washed from the sand, and where the natives themselves had learned the use of the crucible; but definite and accurate as were the accounts, inquiry was always baffled; and the regions of gold remained for two centuries an undiscovered land.
Various were the employments by which the calmness of life was relieved. George Sandys, an idle man, who had been a great traveller, and who did not remain in America, a poet, whose verse was tolerated by Dryden and praised by Isaac Walton, beguiled the ennui of his seclusion by translating the whole of Ovid's Metamorphoses. To the man of leisure the chase furnished a perpetual resource. It was not long before the horse was multiplied in Virginia; and to improve that noble animal was early an object of pride, soon to be favored by legislation. Speed was especially valued, and "the planters pace" became a proverb….
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=130=. CONTRAST OF ENGLISH AND FRENCH COLONIZATION IN AMERICA.
In Asia, the victories of Olive at Plassy, of Coote at the Wandewash, and of Watson and Pococke on the Indian seas, had given England the undoubted ascendency in the East Indies, opening to her suddenly the promise of untold treasures and territorial acquisitions without end. In America, the Teutonic race, with its strong tendency to individuality and freedom, was become the master from the Gulf of Mexico to the Poles; and the English tongue, which but a century and a half before had for its entire world a part only of two narrow islands on the outer verge of Europe, was now to spread more widely than any that had ever given expression to human thought.
Go forth, then, language of Milton and Hampden, language of my country, take possession of the North American continent! Gladden the waste places with every tone that has been rightly struck on the English lyre, with every English word that has been spoken well for liberty and for man! Give an echo to the now silent and solitary mountains; gush out with the fountains that as yet sing their anthems all day long without response; fill the valleys with the voices of love in its purity, the pledges of friendship in its faithfulness; and as the morning sun drinks the dewdrops from the flowers all the way from the dreary Atlantic to the Peaceful Ocean, meet him with the joyous hum of the early industry of freemen! Utter boldly and spread widely through the world the thoughts of the coming apostles of the people's liberty, till the sound that cheers the desert shall thrill through the heart of humanity, and the lips of the messenger of the people's power, as he stands in beauty upon the mountains, shall proclaim the renovating tidings of equal freedom for the race!…