It is an awful contemplation, and in
sitting down in my now solitary chamber to its retrospection, I find
that nearly half a century has passed since its transactions swept
over Europe like a desolating blast. Then I wrote my little chronicle
when the birthright independence of Poland was no more; when she lay
in her ashes, and her mighty men were trodden into the dust; when the
pall of death overspread the country, and her widows and her orphans
wandered afar into the trackless wilderness of a barren world.
During this wide expatriation, some distinguished captives, who had
fallen in the field, and were counted among the slain, having been
found by the victors alive in their stiffened blood, were conveyed to
various prisons; and along with these was discovered the justly
feared, and not less justly deplored, General Kosciusko, who, though
long unheard of by the lone wanderers of his scattered host, had been
thus preserved by the supreme Lord of all, to behold again a remnant
of his own brightened in hope, and comforted by the honoring sympathy
of the good and brave in many nations.
Kosciusko was of noble birth, and early distinguished himself by his
spirit and talents for the martial field. Indeed, owing to the
belligerent position of Poland, situated in the midst of jealous and
encroaching nations, arms was the natural profession of every
gentleman in the kingdom, commerce and agriculture being the usual
pursuits of the middle classes.
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