From the established
date of the elective monarchy, the kingdom became an arena for every
species of ambitious rivalry, and its sure consequences, the
interference of foreign influences; and hence rapidly advanced the
decline of the true independent spirit of the land, to stand in her
laws, and in her own political strength; her own impartial laws, the
palladium of the people and a native king the parental guardian of
their just administration. But, in sad process of time, "strangers of
Rome, of Gaul, and of other nations," in whose veins not a drop of
Sclavonian blood flowed, found means to successively seat themselves
on the throne of the Piasts, the Jagellons, and the Sobieskis, of
ancient Sarmatia; and the revered fabric fell, as by an earthquake,
to be registered no more amongst the kingdoms of the world.
THE EARLY EDUCATION OF KOSCIUSKO AND HIS COMPATRIOTS, WITH ITS
SUBSEQUENT EFFECTS ON THE PRINCIPLES OF THEIR LIVES.
Though their country appeared thus lost to them, they felt its
kingdom still in their minds--in the bosom of memory, in the
consciousness of an ancestry of bravery and of virtue; and though the
soil had passed away from the feet of those whose ancestors of "sword
or share" had trod it as sons and owners, and it now holds no place
for them but their fathers' graves, yet the root is deep in such
planting, and the tree, though invisible to the world, is seen and
nourished in the depths of their hearts by the dews of heaven.
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