Great doors swing on small hinges. The Colonies, towards the close of the first half of the century, were destined to add another example to the many notable proofs which the history of nations before them had furnished of this fact historically observed. The Macedonian Empire burst over the little excess of wine poured one day into Alexander’s cup. The chance meeting of Henry VIII. with Anna Boleyn altered the dynastic current and the religious faith of England, changed the European Atlas, and affected forever the settlement, civilization, and characters of the American Colonies. The acid temper of Tetzel precipitated into Luther’s cup, raised the Reformation into sudden effervescence. The evenly grooved disposition of William the Silent was a pivotal point around which the liberties of the Dutch Republic safely turned. An accident might have easily changed the character or shifted that individual centre, and sent the unbalanced periphery of the state into disastrous confusion or ruin. And so the accidental birth of a daughter, instead of a son, to Charles VI. of Austria, was an unfortunate windfall, which in 1744 raised a tempest of war that enveloped all Europe, and swept with fury over their Transatlantic Colonies. The entire Continent was marshalled into two hostile camps for eight years; England, France, Austria, Prussia, Spain, Holland, and nearly all the minor states, let out their best blood,—the heart’s,—or crippled the best limbs of their young and middle-aged men, spent all their available cash, and mortgaged the future; summer fields of grain were trampled out and remanured by the bone-dust of poor soldiers; Fontenoy, Bergen-op-Zoom, and other places were made, by their horrors, resorts ever since of idle tourists; and all Europe, in fact, begirt with war-fires which burnt up the accumulated wealth of generations,—and all because of that little windfall on the lot of Charles VI. Of all the multitudes maimed, butchered, or consigned to costly pension lists, only two individuals had the slightest interest in the wild carnival,—Maria Theresa, the windfall, the Pomona apple of discord, and one Charles Albert, Elector of Bavaria. France and England were of course on opposite sides, and the Colonial clocks marked Greenwich or Paris time as the master hands set them. The great iron pendulums on each side the sea swung together. The hour-hands constantly set off bells that tolled to funerals. The Colonies followed the hearses in mourning purchased by themselves. Genuine Americans already, they disdained to mention the expense, or to complain that it was beyond their means. In spite of funerals, however, and though the bells toll never so sadly, boys will grow.