'Tiens!' exclaimed Josephine, after seeing her, 'Madame gained ten years yesterday; she has gained ten more during the night.'
When Madame Bernier reached the middle of the garden she halted, and stood for a moment motionless, listening. The next, she uttered a great cry. For she saw a figure emerge from below the terrace, and come limping toward her with outstretched arms.
'NOS AMIS LES COSAQUES!'
[In accordance with the policy embraced by The Continental, of giving views of important subjects from various stand-points, we lay before our readers the following article. It is from the pen which contributed to the 'New American Cyclopædia' the articles 'Czartoryski,' 'Francis Joseph,' 'Gōrgey,' 'Hebrews,' 'Hungary,' 'Kossuth,' 'Poland,' etc., etc. We doubt not the author gives utterance in the present contribution to the feelings which agitated the hearts of thousands of our naturalized citizens during the Russian excitement in New York. Heartily grateful as we may be to Russia for her timely sympathy, our country is pledged to Eternal Justice, and ought never to forget that she is the hope of mankind, and should be its model.]
On the evening of the thirtieth of November last, the large hall of the Cooper Institute—that forum of public opinion in the city of New York, which has so often been the theatre of interesting manifestations—witnessed a scene almost entirely novel. Flags, decorated with emblems unknown, were unfolded over the platform; young girls, daughters of a distant land, or at least of exiles from it, appeared in their national costume, and sang melodious strains in a foreign tongue, which charmed tears into the eyes of those who understood them; a straightened scythe, fixed to the end of a pole, was exhibited, not as a specimen of the agricultural implements of the country from which those homeless men and children had sprung, but as a weapon with which its people, in absence of more efficient arms, was wont to fight for liberty and independence; the bust of the father of the American republic was placed prominently in face of the large gathering, and at its side that of a man bearing the features of a different race, and apparently not less revered.
If I say that this man was Kosciuszko, I have explained all. Every reader not entirely ignorant of history will know which was the land, the people, what the meaning of the weapon, of the song. Who has never yet wept over the narrative of the fall of that unhappy country east and west of the Vistula, so shamelessly torn, quartered, and preyed upon by ravenous neighboring empires? Whose heart has never yet throbbed with admiration for the sons of that land who to this day protest with their blood, poured in streams, against that greatest of all crimes recorded in history, the partition of their country, and that blasphemous lie written upon one of its bloodiest pages: Finis Poloniæ? who, abandoned by the world, betrayed by their neighbors, trampled upon as no nation ever was before, again and again rise, and in 1794, under the lead of Kosciuszko, eclipse the deeds of those who, in 1768, flocked to the banners of Pulaski; in 1830-'31, on the battle fields of Grochow and Ostrolenka, show themselves more powerful than under the dictatorship of the disciple of Washington, and in 1863, fighting without a leader, without a centre, without arms, surprise the world with a heroism, a self-sacrificing devotion, unexampled even in the history of their former insurrections? Who has never heard of Russian batteries assaulted and carried by Polish scythes? Whose bosom is so devoid of the divine cords of justice and sympathy as never yet to have revibrated the strain of the Polish exiles: Poland is not yet lost?
Alas, the chronological dates just touched upon embrace a century! For a hundred years Poland writhes in heroic despair under the heels of Muscovite despotism, dazzles mankind by sublime efforts to recover her right to national life, liberty, and happiness, and not a hand has been stretched out to help her break her chains! All her martyrdom wrests from the better nature of mankind is a tear of mourning, when, after a superhuman struggle, she again sinks exhausted, and is believed to sink into the grave. And has Poland well deserved this heartless indifference, this pitilessness of the nations? Has she delivered none? aided none? served none? defended none? Answer, Vienna, rescued from the Turkish yoke by John Sobieski! Answer, thou monument at West Point, thou fort at the mouth of the Savannah, ye towns and counties named Kosciuszko and Pulaski! Answer, Elba and St. Helena! Answer, Hungarian companion-in-arms of Bern, Dembinski, and Wysocki! Answer, Germany, Europe, Christendom, for centuries shielded by Polish valor against Tartar barbarism and Moslem fanaticism!
Alas, Poland must beg even for sympathy! That gathering, which commemorated, on its thirty-third anniversary, the outbreak of the rising of 1830, was destined to resuscitate the feeling of the American people for the Polish cause. For the Poles sojourning in this country had reasons to believe that even that passive sentiment was on the wane, that interests, not less illusory than selfish, were working to destroy even the impressions which sacred national remembrances, by twining together the memories of Washington and Kosciuszko, had created in the American heart. Strange to say, amid the roar of cannon thundering freedom to slaves, amid streams of blood shed in the name of nationality, on this side of the Atlantic, amid daily echoes reverberating the groans of butchered martyrs, of mothers and sisters scourged, hanged, or dragged into captivity, on the other side—New York had gone mad with enthusiasm for the Muscovites! The metropolis of the freest people on the globe had prostrated herself before the shrine of semi-Asiatic despotism, had kissed the hands of the knoutbearers of the czar, had desecrated the holy memory of Washington, by coupling his name, his bust, with those of an Alexander, nay, of a Nicholas! The woes of Poland were forgotten, her cause was wantonly assailed, her fair name defamed by the very same organs of public opinion which for months and months made people shudder with daily recitals of nameless atrocities committed by the Russian hangmen, by the Muravieffs and Aunekoffs, on the defenders of their country and liberty. Unthinking scribblers and lecturers called Russia and America twin sister empires of the future, agitated for an alliance defensive and offensive between them; Poland and her defenders were calumniated. Væ victis!