It is very possible that here, in this lovely retreat on the banks of the Schuylkill, in the long summer days of 1780, was matured the slowly-ripening plot, which but for its timely discovery must have seriously imperiled, if not altogether lost to us, the glorious inheritance we have held these hundred years.  One can fancy the martial figure of the brave, bad man pacing back and forth beneath these very trees perhaps, absorbed in bitter reflections on his real and fancied wrongs—­the rapid promotion of men younger than himself both in years and services, whilst his own bold deeds had met with but tardy acknowledgment from a cold and cautious Congress; the long array of debts which arose like spectres to harass him even in this peaceful Eden; and, worst of all, the humiliating remembrance of Washington’s rebuke.  It cannot be denied that the temptation to free himself from the toils in which his own dishonest course had entangled him must have beset the unhappy man with almost resistless power.  With his hopelessly impaired character, and weighed down by debts he had no means of discharging—­for he could scarcely hope for an early settlement of his accounts from a Congress already impoverished by an expensive war—­to remain in the army was, to a man of Arnold’s proud, selfish nature, almost out of the question.  By going over to the enemy he could at once shake off associations which were now become intolerable to him, gain perpetual immunity from his liabilities, and secure for himself a life of distinction and luxury.  He grasped at the delusive vision and was lost for ever.

In August of this year he received the coveted appointment to the command of West Point, and Philadelphia saw him no more.  He took up his residence in Beverley Robinson’s lately-vacated house on the east bank of the Hudson and nearly opposite the entrenchments at West Point.  The story of the discovered plot and Major Andre’s detention is too well known to be more than glanced at here:  everything was in readiness for the surrender of the post into the hands of Sir Henry Clinton when the unfortunate young adjutant was taken, and the papers criminating Arnold found upon his person.  No one, I am sure, can read unmoved Dr. Thacher’s eye-witness account of the execution of this officer, lost through Arnold’s cowardly blundering.  The gravity of his offence against a flag of truce need not prevent our admiration of his soldierly conduct after his arrest, the perfect truthfulness to which he adhered during his examination, and the noble resignation with which he met his dreadful fate.  Arnold had here a fine opportunity to retrieve in some degree the bitter mischief of which he had been the occasion.  Had he but come forth and suffered in Andre’s place, the blackness of his crime would have almost disappeared in the brilliancy of his atonement; but he chose a living death instead, and his hapless victim went to his doom accompanied by the pity of every honest American heart.  His