the most astounding catastrophe in human annals. Whatever view we take of
the Revolution, whether we regard it as a blessing or as a curse, we must
needs admit it was a reaction of the most violent kind--a reaction contrary
to the preceding action.

The old monarchy can only claim to have produced the Revolution in the
sense of having provoked it; as intemperance has been known to produce
sobriety, and extravagance parsimony. If the _ancien regime_ led in the
result to an abrupt transition to the modern era, it was only because it
had rendered the old era so utterly execrable to mankind that escape in any
direction seemed a relief, were it over a precipice.



%NEW YORK TAKEN BY THE ENGLISH%

A.D. 1664

JOHN R. BRODHEAD


For half a century the Dutch colony in New York, then called New
Netherlands, had developed under various administrations, when British
conquest brought it under another dominion. This transfer of the government
affected the whole future of the colony and of the great State into which
it grew, although the original Dutch influence has never disappeared from
its character and history.

Under Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Governor (1647-1664), the colony
made great progress. He conciliated the Indians, agreed upon a boundary