And some were shut up from
the light of day in the fettered captivity of foreign prisons, until
"the iron entered their souls." Amongst these noble captives were
General Kosciusko and his faithful Achates, Niemcivitz, to whom might
be justly applied the words of our bard of "The Seasons," affixed to
the young brow of Sir Philip Sidney--
"The plume of war, with early chaplets crown'd
The hero's laurel with the poet's bays."
But the Emperor Paul, on his accession to the throne of the Czars, as
has before been noted, was too generous a captor to hold in cage so
sweet a singing bird and so noble a lion; and he gave them liberty,
appending to the act, dearest to a free-born heart, an imperial
donation to Kosciusko that might have furnished him with a golden
argosy all over the world. But the wounded son of Poland declined it
in a manner worthy her name, and with an ingenuous gratitude towards
the munificent sovereign who had offered it, not as a bribe for
"golden opinions," but as a sincere tribute to high heroic virtue.
The writer of this note was informed of this fact many years ago, by
a celebrated English banker, at that time at St. Petersburg, and
corresponding between that city and London, with whom the imperial
present had been lodged, and through whom General Kosciusko
respectfully but decidedly declined its acceptance.
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