But as this opens a new era in the fortunes of New Amsterdam I will here put an end to this second book of my history, and will treat of the maternal policy of the mother country in my next.

BOOK III.

IN WHICH IS RECORDED THE GOLDEN REIGN OF WOUTER VAN TWILLER.

CHAPTER I.

Grievous and very much to be commiserated is the task of the feeling historian who writes the history of his native land.  If it fell to his lot to be the recorder of calamity or crime, the mournful page is watered with his tears—­nor can he recall the most prosperous and blissful era without a melancholy sigh at the reflection that it has passed away for ever!  I know not whether it be owing to an immoderate love for the simplicity of former times, or to that certain tenderness of heart incident to all sentimental historians, but I candidly confess that I cannot look back on the happier days of our city, which I now describe, without great dejection of spirits.  With faltering hand do I withdraw the curtain of oblivion that veils the modest merit of our venerable ancestors, and as their figures rise to my mental vision, humble myself before their mighty shades.

Such are my feelings when I revisit the family mansion of the Knickerbockers, and spend a lonely hour in the chamber where hang the portraits of my forefathers, shrouded in dust like the forms they represent.  With pious reverence do I gaze on the countenances of those renowned burghers who have preceded me in the steady march of existence—­whose sober and temperate blood now meanders through my veins, flowing slower and slower in its feeble conduits, until its current shall soon be stopped for ever!

These I say to myself are but frail memorials of the mighty men who flourished in the days of the patriarchs:  but who, alas! have long since smouldered in that tomb towards which my steps are insensibly and irresistibly hastening.  As I pace the darkened chamber, and lose myself in melancholy musings, the shadowy images around me almost seem to steal once more into existence, their countenances to assume the animation of life—­their eyes to pursue me in every movement!  Carried away by the delusions of fancy, I almost imagine myself surrounded by the shades of the departed, and holding sweet converse with the worthies of antiquity!  Ah, hapless Diedrich! born in a degenerate age, abandoned to the buffetings of fortune—­a stranger and weary pilgrim in thy native land—­blest with no weeping wife, nor family of helpless children; but doomed to wander neglected through those crowded streets, and elbowed by foreign upstarts from those fair abodes where once thine ancestors held sovereign empire!

Let me not, however, lose the historian in the man, nor suffer the doting recollections of age to overcome me, while dwelling with fond garrulity on the virtuous days of the patriarchs—­on those sweet days of simplicity and ease, which never more will dawn on the lovely island of Manna-hata.