A History of New York, From the Beginnimg of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (Volume 1); Containing, Among Many Surprising and Curious ... Projects of William the Testy, and - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1826. Excerpt: ... THE CITY WAXES GREAT. 151 CHAPTER VII. How the city of New-Amsterdam waxed great, under the protection of Oloffe the Dreamer. There is something exceedingly delusive in thus looking back, through the long vista of departed years, and catching a glimpse of the fairy realms of antiquity that lie beyond. Like some goodly landscape melting into distance, they receive a thousand charms from their very obscurity, and the fancy delights to till up their outlines with graces and excellencies of its own creation. Thus beam on my imagination those happier days of our city, when as yet New-Amsterdam was a mere pastoral town, shrouded in groves of sycamore and willows, and surrounded by trackless forests and wide spreading waters, that seemed to shut out all 1g cares and vanities of a wicked world. In those days did this embryo city present the rare and noble spectacle of a community governed without laws; and thus being left to its own course, and the fostering care of Providence, increased as rapidly as though it had been burthened with a dozen panniers full of those sage laws that are usually heaped on the backs of young cities--in order to make them grow. And in this particular 1 great152 DISADVANTAGES OF LAWS. ly admire the wisdom and sound knowledge of human nature, displayed by the sage Olotfe the Dreamer, and his fellow legislators. For my part I have not so bad an opinion of mankind as many of my brother philosophers. I do not think poor human nature so sorry a piece of workmanship as they would make it out to be; and as far as I have observed, I am fully satisfied that man, if left to himseif, would about as readily go right as wrong. It is only this eternally sounding in his ears that it is his duty to go right, that makes him go the very reverse. The nob...