Great nations resemble great men in this particular, that their greatness is seldom known until they get in trouble; adversity, therefore, has been wisely denominated the ordeal of true greatness, which, like gold, can never receive its real estimation until it has passed through the furnace. In proportion, therefore, as a nation, a community, or an individual (possessing the inherent quality of greatness) is involved in perils and misfortunes, in proportion does it rise in grandeur, and even when sinking under calamity, makes, like a house on fire, a more glorious display than ever it did in the fairest period of its prosperity. The vast empire of China, though teeming with population and imbibing and concentrating the wealth of nations, has vegetated through a succession of drowsy ages; and were it not for its internal revolutions, and the subversion of its ancient government by the Tartars, might have presented nothing but a dull detail of monotonous prosperity. Pompeii and Herculaneum might have passed into oblivion, with a herd of their contemporaries, had they not been fortunately overwhelmed by a volcano. The renowned city of Troy acquired celebrity only from its ten years’ distress, and final conflagration; Paris rose in importance by the plots and massacres which ended in the exaltation of Napoleon; and even the mighty London has skulked through the records of time, celebrated for nothing of moment excepting the plague, the great fire, and Guy Faux’s gun-powder plot! Thus cities and empires creep along, enlarging in silent obscurity, until they burst forth in some tremendous calamity—and snatch, as it were, immortality from the explosion! The above principle being admitted, my reader will plainly perceive that the city of New Amsterdam and its dependent province are on the high-road to greatness. Dangers and hostilities threaten from every side, and it is really a matter of astonishment, how so small a state has been able, in so short a time, to entangle itself in so many difficulties. Ever since the province was first taken by the nose, at the Fort of Goed Hoop, in the tranquil days of Wouter Van Twiller, has it been gradually increasing in historic importance; and never could it have had a more appropriate chieftain to conduct it to the pinnacle of grandeur than Peter Stuyvesant.