number I have just named. I have been grateful for this advantage, and I
trust it will appear, by evidence that will be here afforded, that I have
not lived in a quarter of the world, or in an age, when and where, and to
which great events have been altogether strangers.

My earliest recollections, as a matter of course, are of Satanstoe and the
domestic fireside. In my childhood and youth, I heard a great deal said of
the Protestant Succession, the House of Hanover, and King George II.; all
mixed up with such names as those of George Clinton, Gen. Monckton, Sir
Charles Hardy, James de Lancey, and Sir Danvers Osborne, his official
representatives in the colony. Every age has its _old_ and its _last_ wars,
and I can well remember that which occurred between the French in the
Canadas and ourselves, in 1744. I was then seven years old, and it was an
event to make an impression on a child of that tender age. My honoured
grandfather was then living, as he was long afterwards, and he took a
strong interest in the military movements of the period, as was natural for
an old soldier. New York had no connection with the celebrated expedition
that captured Louisbourg, then the Gibraltar of America, in 1745; but this
could not prevent an old soldier like Capt. Littlepage from entering into
the affair with all his heart, though forbidden to use his hand. As the
reader may not be aware of all the secret springs that set public events
in motion, it may be well here to throw in a few words in the way of
explanation.

There was and is little sympathy, in the way of national feeling, between
the colonies of New England and those which lie farther south. We are all
loyal, those of the east as well as those of the south-west and south; but
there is, and ever has been, so wide a difference in our customs, origins,
religious opinions, and histories, as to cause a broad moral line, in the
way of feeling, to be drawn between the colony of New York and those