tramp of martial footsteps, it burst into the street. A double
rank of soldiers made their appearance, occupying the whole
breadth of the passage, with shouldered matchlocks, and matches
burning, so as to present a row of fires in the dusk. Their
steady march was like the progress of a machine, that would roll
irresistibly over everything in its way. Next, moving slowly,
with a confused clatter of hoofs on the pavement, rode a party of
mounted gentlemen, the central figure being Sir Edmund Andros,
elderly, but erect and soldier-like. Those around him were his
favorite councillors, and the bitterest foes of New England. At
his right hand rode Edward Randolph, our arch-enemy, that
"blasted wretch," as Cotton Mather calls him, who achieved the
downfall of our ancient government, and was followed with a
sensible curse, through life and to his grave. On the other side
was Bullivant, scattering jests and mockery as he rode along.
Dudley came behind, with a downcast look, dreading, as well he
might, to meet the indignant gaze of the people, who beheld him,
their only countryman by birth, among the oppressors of his
native land. The captain of a frigate in the harbor, and two or
three civil officers under the Crown, were also there. But the
figure which most attracted the public eye, and stirred up the
deepest feeling, was the Episcopal clergyman of King's Chapel,
riding haughtily among the magistrates in his priestly vestments,
the fitting representatives of prelacy and persecution, the union
of church and state, and all those abominations which had driven
the Puritans to the wilderness. Another guard of soldiers, in
double rank, brought up the rear.

The whole scene was a picture of the condition of New England,
and its moral, the deformity of any government that does not grow