of oral
tradition, and of habitual imitative reverence of the past. Schools
and colleges were instituted, teaching for doctrines the prevailing
sentiments of the endowers, or of the instructors employed. During
the reigns of the later sovereigns of the Jagellon dynasty, Sigismund
I. and II., and that of their predecessor, John Sobieski, the
principles of these seminaries might be considered sound. But soon
after the death of the last-named monarch, when the latent mischief
contained in the Utopian idea of the perfection of an always elective
monarchy began to shake the stability of even the monarchy itself,
certain of the public teachers evinced correspondent signs of this
destructive species of freemasonry; and about the same period the
Voltaire venom of infidelity against all the laws of God and man
being poured throughout the whole civilized world, the general effect
had so banefully reached the seats of national instruction in Poland,
that several of the most venerated personages, whose names have
already been, commemorated in the preceding biographical story,
congregated together to stem, by a counteracting current, the torrent
where they saw it likely to overflow; to sap up its introduced
sources, by obtaining the abolition of some of the most subtle and
dangerous of the scholastic institutions, and the establishment of
others in their room, on the sound foundation of moral and religious
polity between men and nations.

The sole remaining princely descendants of the three just referred
to, true patriot-monarchs, were the earliest awakened to resist the
spirit of evil spreading amongst all classes in the nation. The
Czartoryski and the Zamoyski race, both of the Jagellon line, and
near kinsmen to the then newly raised monarch to the Polish throne,
Stanislaus Poniatowski, appeared like twin stars over the darkened
field, and the whole aspect of the country seemed speedily changed. A
contemporary writer bears record that one hundred and twenty-seven
provincial colleges were founded, perfected, and supported by them
and their patriotic colleagues; while the University of Vilna was
judiciously and munificently organized by its prince palatine, Adam
Czartoryski himself, and a statute drawn up which declared it "an
open high-school from the supreme board of public education for all
the Polish provinces." Herein was every science exalting to the
faculties of man, and conducive to his sacred aspirations, seriously
and diligently inculcated; and every principle of morality and
religion, purifying to his mixed nature, and therefore calculated to
establish him in the answering conduct, truth, justice, and loyal
obedience to the hereditary revered laws of the nation, equally
instilled, qualifying him to uphold them, and to defend their freedom
from all offensive operations at home or abroad, intended to subvert
the purity of their code or the integrity of their administration.
Such was the import of the implied vow on entering the university.

Amongst the gallant youths brought up in such a school of public
virtue was Thaddeus Kosciusko and the young Timotheus Niemcivitz, his
friend from youth to age. Kosciusko, as has already been said, was of
noble parentage; and to be the son of a Polish nobleman was to be
born a soldier, and its practical education, with sabre and lance,
his daily pastime. But military studies were included in these
various colleges, and the friends soon became as mutually expert in
arms as they ever after continued severally distinguished in the
fields of their country with sword or lyre. Besides, neither of the
young cavaliers passed quite away from their _alma mater_
without having each received the completing accolade of "true
knighthood" by the stroke of "fealty to honor!" from the inaugurating
sunbeam of some lovely woman's eye. Such befell the youthful
Kosciusko, one bright evening, in a large and splendid circle of "the
beautiful and brave" at Vilna; and it never lessened its full rays in
his chivalric heart, from that hour devoted to the angel-like unknown
who had shed them on him, and who had seemed to doubly consecrate the
ardors of his soul to his country--her country--the country of all he
loved and honored upon earth. How he wrought out this silent vow is a
story of deep interest--equally faithful to his patriotic loyalty and
to his ever-cherished love; and in some subsequent reminiscences of
the hero, should the writer live to touch a Polish theme again, they
may be related with additional honor to his memory.

Brief was the time after the preceding sealing scene of the young
Kosciusko for his military vocation took place, before himself and
his friend Niemcivitz--who had also received his "anointing spell,"
which he gayly declared came by more bright eyes than he would dare
whisper to their possessors--made a joint arrangement to quit the
study of arms, though thus cheered on by the Muses and the Graces,
and at once enter the exercise in some actual field of rugged war.
The newly-opened dispute between Great Britain and her colonies in
North America seemed calculated for their honorable practice.
Consulting some of their most respected friends, they speedily found
means to cross the seas, and shared the first great campaign under
Washington. The issue of that campaign, and those which followed it,
need not be repeated here; suffice it to say, the hard-fought contest
ended in a treaty of peace between the parent country and its
contumacious offspring, in the year 1783, with England's
acknowledgment of their independence, under the name of the United
States of America.

The two gallant Poles returned to Europe, and onward to their own
country, by a route tracked by former brave deeds; through France,
Germany, and other lands, marked by the Gustavuses, the Montecuculi,
the Turennes, the Condes, the Marlboroughs, the Eugenes, champions
alike of national peace and national glory on those widely-extended
plains and bulwarked frontiers, till the belligerent clouds of a
still more threatening hostility than any of those repelled invasions
were seen hovering luridly over their own beloved country. Warned
thus, during their pleasant travel, of the coming events whose
shadows seemed to rise on every side of Poland, in forms appalling to
the luxurious, the avaricious, the indolently selfish, of every
description in the land, but which only roused and nerved the hearts
and arms of her two sons, courageous in the simplicity of their
purpose--Poland's preservation! they hastened in that moment to her
bosom.

The events of this her mortal struggle, in fast union with these
faithful sons, and other filial hearts, commemorated in the foregoing
narrative of Thaddeus Sobieski, need not be recapitulated here. It
amply tells the fate of the great kingdom which had stood as with
gates of brass, until the intestine rivalries of an elective
monarchy--the worshipped idol alike of presumptuous private ambition
and pretended patriotic liberality--the true masked priest of public
anarchy--rent them asunder, and the watchful nations, ready for
plunder and extended dominion, poured into them a flood like the
rivers of Babylon, over all her walls and towers.

We have read that part of her bravest sons were swept away into
distant lands; some to die in homeless exile, others to meet the
honorable compassion and the cheering hopes of sympathy from a people
like themselves, who had formerly fought the good fight for England's
laws, liberties, and royal name in Europe. And some were shut up from
the light of day in the fettered captivity of foreign prisons, until
"the iron entered their souls." Amongst these noble captives were
General Kosciusko and his faithful Achates, Niemcivitz, to whom might
be justly applied the words of our bard of "The Seasons," affixed to
the young brow of Sir Philip Sidney--

    "The plume of war, with early chaplets crown'd
     The hero's laurel with the poet's bays."

But the Emperor Paul, on his accession to the throne of the Czars, as
has before been noted, was too generous a captor to hold in cage so
sweet a singing bird and so noble a lion; and he gave them liberty,
appending to the act, dearest to a free-born heart, an imperial
donation to Kosciusko that might have furnished him with a golden
argosy all over the world. But the wounded son of Poland declined it
in a manner worthy her name, and with an ingenuous gratitude towards
the munificent sovereign who had offered it, not as a bribe for
"golden opinions," but as a sincere tribute to high heroic virtue.

The writer of this note was informed of this fact many years ago, by
a celebrated English banker, at that time at St. Petersburg, and
corresponding between that city and London, with whom the imperial
present had been lodged, and through whom General Kosciusko
respectfully but decidedly declined its acceptance.

Then it was that, after halting a short time in England, he with his
school and camp companion in so many changes, prepared a second
crossing over the Atlantic, to revisit its victor President in his
olive-grounds at Mount Vernon. But Niemcivitz had another errand. His
roving Cupid had long settled its wing, and he eagerly sought to
plight, before Heaven's altar in the church, the already sacred vow
he had pledged to a fair daughter of that country while sharing the
dangers of its battlefields.

It was with great difficulty the portcullis of a friendship strong as
death had been raised in old chivalric Kent, to allow departure to so
dear and honored a guest as he, who their master had seen fall in his
memorable wounds on the plain of Brzesc. But he promised to return
again, should the same sweet cherub that sat up aloft on his first
voyage to America steer back his little bark in safety; and then he
trusted to be once more clasped to the bosom of Poland, in that of
his most beloved friend, a dweller in England. [Footnote: The
portcullis, the gate, and the armorial crest of Beaufort has
descended from the royal founder of the family, John of Gaunt, Duke
of Lancaster.]

Besides this cherished heir of his earliest remembrances, there were
other friends of olden days who had welcomed him with gladdening
recollections. Amongst these was the family of Vanderhorst,
originally of the Spanish Netherlands, who, from religious rather
than political motives, had transferred themselves from certain
persecutions in that land during times of papal tyranny to the
shelter of the British colonies on the Transatlantic shore, and who,
on the separation of those colonies into independent states from the
mother country, had removed, in relative grateful duties, to the
governing land of their early refuge, and were now dwelling here in
prosperity and happy repose, when General Kosciusko set his honored
foot on its sea-girt and virtue-bulwarked coast He was their former
guest while at New York, and he readily accepted their eager
invitation that he would revisit them in their new paternal country.
At this period the head of the respected family resided at Bristol,
in Queen's Square, (the Grosvenor Square of that opulent city,) and
Mr. Vanderhorst inhabited one of the most superb mansions in it.
General Kosciusko arrived at his worthy host's door on the 7th of
June, 1797, and was greeted by the hearty embrace of his old friend
and the blushingly-presented cheeks of his two daughters, young and
lovely, in their teens. Their brother, a fine youth, pressed the hand
of his father's gallant and revered guest to his lips. Niemcivitz,
meanwhile, with dew-like tear-drops glittering over his joyous
smiles, greeted every one with the affectionate recognition of a
heart that seemed