Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1833, BY JAMES D. KNOWLES, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. Lewis & Penniman, Printers. TO THE Citizens of Rhode=Esland, THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED BY DIVINITY SCHOOL LIBRARY. HARVARD UNIVERSITY 1* THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. THE citizens of the United States have sometimes been ridiculed, for an alleged propensity to please their imaginations with romantic visions concerning the future glory of their country. They boast, it is said, not of what the nation has been, nor of what it is, but of what it will be. The American faculty, it is affirmed, is anticipation, not memory. If the truth of this charge were admitted, it might be replied, that the 'proper motion' of the youthful imagination-in states as well as in individuals-is towards the future. It springs forward, with buoyant wing, forgetting the past, and disregarding the present, in the eagerness of its desire to reach fairer scenes. It is the instinct of our nature, the irrepressible longing of the immortal soul for something higher and better. It is never extinguished, though frequent disappointments abate its ardor, and long experience confirms the testimony of revelation, that perfect happiness is sought in vain on earth. In mature age, therefore, reason has corrected the errors of the imagination, and the old man looks backward to his early years, as the happiest period of his life, and praises the men and the scenes of his youthful days, as far surpassing those which he now sees around him.* Most nations are impelled, by the same principle, to recur to some past epoch in their history, as the period of their greatest glory. There is little in the prospect of the future to excite their hopes. The adherents to old institutions dread the progress of that spirit of innovation, which has already overthrown many of them, and which threatens speedy ruin to the rest. And the patriot, who is striving to raise his country to the enjoyment of liberty and happiness, foresees too many obstacles, too much fierce strife, suffering and bloodshed, to permit him to contemplate the future without anxiety. It is the happiness of America, that almost every thing in her condition invites her to look forward with hope. Her perfect freedom,† her rapid progress, the elastic energy of her national character, the boundless extent of her territory, her situation, far from the contentions of European nations, and safe from the dangers both of their friendship and of their hostility, all awaken and justify the confident hope, that she is destined to reach a height of prosperity and power, which no other nation, of ancient or modern times, has attained. But if Americans were so prone to look forward, that they forgot the past, it would certainly be a fault, which would deserve rebuke. Bright as the future may be, the past can present scenes, on which the American may gaze with pleasure, and from which he should draw lessons of wisdom and incitements to patriotism. Passing by the prosperous course of our history, since the adoption of the * "Laudator temporis acti, Se puero, castigator censorque minorum." Horace de Arte Poet. l. 173-4. It is mortifying and painful, that truth compels us to except any persons among us from this remark. |