Amid all this dust and refuse matter of war one can pick out now and then some stray grains of shining value. Such was Mary’s and William’s College, established in Virginia in 1693, making the second bright college speck in America. Such were the gold and silver ores of thought found by George Fox, Increase Mather, and others, mixed with brown earth or imbedded in quartz, but valuable in any collection. Such, too, the loving messages sent from Friends in England to their brethren here, which we can now pick from that colonial dust-heap where they shine like plates of mica. The Orange William could not of course long bloom in peace in his new royal bed. His father-in-law, James II., had fled across the channel to Louis XIV., and was selfishly entertained by him at Paris. William objected—as some people do nowadays—to his relative’s prolonged stay in that fascinating capital. This little unpleasantness resulted in a war which lasted until 1697. Of course the Colonies were highly offended too; and as soon as the two rather elderly gentlemen at Versailles and St. James had taken snuff, there was a general sneeze from Passamaquoddy Bay to the Altamaha River. Getting thus very red in the face, the colonists flung out their hands, which of course hit Canada right in the face. The French resented the slap, and pommelled away at New York, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, scratching off many scalps at Dover, Schenectady, and along the Penobscot. A regular settler was aimed back by the Colonies at the very nob of the French settlements, Quebec. An arm-ament, directed by Sir William Phipps, was flung out towards the St. Lawrence, but a skilful fence by the alert French warded off the blow. To heat the pokers in these fires, kindled in Europe, blown over to this side and fed here by wood furnished by the colonists, and often hauled from a great distance, was laborious and expensive. But this was a small care for England who coolly took out the irons when well aglow. Little, however, did she then imagine that the young arms thus smiting the irons on these French and Indian anvils were making and hardening muscle that would one day resist her own heavy and long-reaching blows. Slowly, slowly, but surely. Wheat left in Egyptian cases for quite other purposes, three thousand years ago, patiently sleeping, sprouts at the call of the sun in after centuries. The colonial seeds carelessly or selfishly cast by royal hands into furrows, seeming like very rugged and ugly blotches on the wide wintry-looking fields of North America, quickened in less than a hundred years by the rain-patters, were to wave in ridges as green and blossoming, as English hedges in June.