. This truth is just as apparent
to-day, in connection with the prodigies of the republic, as it then was in
connection with those distant rulers, whose merits it was always safe to
applaud, and whose demerits it was treason to reveal. It is a consequence of
this mental dependence, that public opinion is so much placed at the mercy of
the designing, and the world, in the midst of its idle boasts of knowledge and
improvement, is left to receive its truth, on all such points as touch the
interests of the powerful and managing, through such a medium, and such a medium
only, as may serve the particular views of those who pull the wires. Pressed
upon by the subjects of France, who were then encircling the British colonies,
with a belt of forts and settlements, that completely secured the savages for
allies, it would have been difficult to say, whether the Americans loved the
English more than they hated the French, and those who then lived probably would
have considered the alliance which took place between the cis-Atlantic subjects,
and the ancient rivals of the British crown, some twenty years later, as an
event entirely without the circle of probabilities. In a word, as fashions are
exaggerated in a province, so are opinions; and the loyalty, that, at London,
merely formed a part of a political scheme, at New York was magnified into a
faith that might almost have moved mountains. Disaffection was consequently a
rare offence, and most of all, would treason that should favor France, or
Frenchmen, have been odious in the eyes of the provincials. The last thing that
Mabel would suspect of Jasper, was the very crime with which he now stood
secretly charged, and, if others near her endured the pain of distrust, she at
least was filled with the generous confidence of a woman. As yet, no whisper had
reached her ear to disturb the feeling of reliance with which she had early
regarded the young sailor, and her own mind would have been the last to suggest
such a thought, of itself. The pictures of the past and of the present,
therefore, that exhibited themselves so rapidly to her active imagination, were
unclouded with a shade that might affect any in whom she felt an interest, and
ere she had mused, in the manner related, a quarter of an hour, the whole scene
around her was filled with unalloyed satisfaction.
    The season and the night, to represent them truly, were of a nature to
stimulate the sensations which youth, health and happiness are wont to associate
with novelty.
