cover from which to fire on the enemy as they returned."1 Ammi Cutter sought to dissuade him from his purpose, but he refused to leave, declaring that "an Englishman's house was his castle."2 A party of the Essex militia who were "unsuspiciously lying in wait" at this point were surprised by the flank guard and took hasty refuge in Russell's house. Jason Russell was shot as he was entering the door and the troops followed, "killing all they found inside, save a few who fled to the cellar, the latter shooting whoever of the British attempted to descend the cellar-stairs."3 Unless we are prepared to assert that every shot fired and every wound inflicted by the British was a wanton atrocity, I think we may dignify the memory of stouthearted Jason Russell by declaring that he fell in battle in defence of a cause that was more to him than life. Is Percy guilty or not guilty of the charge of instigating or abetting a system of savagery on his retreat? I admit that I find nothing to support such a charge either in our knowledge of the man or in the American evidence that is offered in support of the indictment. That he embittered the fighting after taking over the command is indisputable, but only in the same sense that Grant embittered the fighting in Virginia as compared with the standards of McClellan. He knew nothing of the cases of Raymond, Marcy, or Barber, of Hannah Adams, Jason Russell, or the two men at the Cooper Tavern. We may be sure that he ordered buildings to be fired or instructed his officers to burn them as military circumstances required. He must have known of the looting, and it is preposterous to suppose that he did not adopt through his officers the most strenuous measures to break it up. He could have known little of the petty details of the fighting, but he kept the column moving at its even steady pace and, in spite of irritating circumstances and some unavoidable confusion, brought it over Charlestown Common on schedule time with about forty killed and only six men missing. Unlike Colonel Smith he carried away no bitter memories of the day and harbored no resentment against his enemies for the methods they employed. In fact he highly commended their tactics as ad 1 S. A. Smith, West Cambridge on the Nineteenth of April, 1775, pp. 37, 37-38. 2 Cutter, History of Arlington, p. 69. • Id. p. 69. mirably adapted to their purpose. He had believed the people to be cowards and had so expressed himself in letters to his father. After Lexington he frankly confessed his error. "Whoever looks upon them as an irregular mob will find himself much mistaken" is his comment to General Harvey. "For my part, I never believed, I confess, that they would have attacked the King's troops, or have had the perseverance I found in them yesterday." In Almon's Remembrancer in 1775, there appeared this bit of Boston gossip: "Lord Percy said at table, he never saw anything equal to the intrepidity of the New England minute men." 2 I should like to feel that there was sitting at the same table that other soldier who remarked, "the rebels were monstrous numerous, and surrounded us on every side; . . . but they never would engage us properly.' We know what Percy's reply would have been to that, for we have it in his letters: "they knew too well what was proper, to do so. . . . They have men amongst them who know very well what they are about." 4 "3 The comments of Percy's officers, while less sportsmanlike than those of their chief, are for the most part free from criticism of the tactics employed by their enemy on the 19th of April. Lieutenant William Carter was an exception;5 Evelyn still insisted that the provincials were cowards, but sustained by a mad fanatical zeal; while Captain George Harris, afterwards Lord Harris of Indian fame, expressed a wish to meet the Americans in a fair stand-up fight and give them the drubbing they deserved. Aside from these we find no trace of rancor in the battle narratives of the King's officers. To my mind these officers from their commander down conducted the retreat in the spirit of gentlemen, and not of brutes. As long as war is war, and nations and peoples continue to assert their just 1 April 20, 1775, in Letters, p. 52. 2 Remembrancer, 1775, i. 80. • Force, 4 American Archives, ii. 441. 5 On July 2, 1775, Lieut. Carter wrote: "Never had the British army so ungenerous an enemy to oppose; they send their Rifle men, (five or six at a time) who conceal themselves behind trees, &c. till an opportunity presents itself of taking a shot at our advanced centries, which done they immediately retreat. What an infamous method of carrying on a war!" (Genuine Detail, etc., 1784, p. 7). S. R. Lushington, Life and Services of General Lord Harris (1845), p. 40. or fancied rights by force of arms, I think we may regard the story of Earl Percy's march in its incitements to barbarities and in its freedom from such excesses upon either side, as a creditable chapter in the military annals of the Anglo-Saxon race. In conclusion, despite his faults and misdemeanors, I can almost find it in my heart to say a kind word for the British common soldier. I wonder if, after the lapse of nearly one hundred and fifty years, it would be sacrilege to include the name of Thomas Atkins in the list of the heroic sufferers of the day. He had undergone trials that were long and sore, he had been insulted and his uniform reviled, he had encountered New England rum, and for resulting offences he had been rigorously punished by his officers. He went out on an excursion through the King's dominions, he was upon the King's business, and was affronted by armed men who denied the King's authority. He was marched and driven to the last ounce of his strength, and believed that he had been made the victim of sneaking, scalping assassins who were afraid to show their faces. It was a far cry from the military ethics of the French Guard at Fontenoy to those of these rebels of kindred blood. He did not know that he was contending with unselfish patriots who were risking all in a righteous cause, who were willing to die that liberty might live. As footsore and weary he strode manfully along, nursing that wicked bayonet of his, and devoid of all compassion toward his foe, we should at least remember that he had suffered much, that he was very brave, and that he did not understand. Mr. WORTHINGTON C. FORD announced a forthcoming volume of the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, being a check-list of broadside issues of the press in Massachusetts, 1639-1800. The broadside was the forerunner of the news-sheet and later newspaper and was used for official announcements and political controversy. The first issue from the press in Massachusetts was a broadside- -the Freeman's Oath. Twenty years later a sheet of verses, and after another twenty years regulations for small-pox treatment, marked the developing use; but to Benjamin Harris is due the first political broadside and the first news-sheet. Customs and legal forms came into use towards the end of the seventeenth century, but not before 1704 were the behavior and dying speech of a criminal embalmed in that form. Attempts at illustration were crude and infrequent. The colony seal, engraved by John Foster, decorated some laws and proclamations, and Andros introduced the royal arms, but only on a single occasion. Harris, the printer, was successful in introducing it after 1692. The first true illustration is found on a sheet of 1718. Mr. Ford also glanced at the ballad literature of the day, a field yet to be studied carefully. Mr. ALBERT MATTHEWS spoke as follows: In his interesting paper on "Germanisms in English Speech: God's Acre," contributed in 1913 to the Kittredge Anniversary Papers,1 Dr. John A. Walz showed that this term had for three centuries been occasionally employed by English travellers in Germany; that it is an adaptation of the German Gottesacker, first found in the sixteenth century, and not, as Longfellow asserted in 1841, "an ancient Saxon phrase;" and that the vogue which the term now enjoys is due to Longfellow's poem bearing the title "God's Acre." Whenever the philologist pits himself against the poet he is bound to lose, though he have analogy, etymology, and usage on his side. It is true that "acre" in nineteenth-century English is used exclusively as a measure; generations ago it ceased to have the meaning of field, as a look at the New English Dictionary tells us; yet Longfellow's adaptation of the German word became a permanent part of the modern English vocabulary, especially the poetic vocabulary. Without knowing it, yes, without intending it, Longfellow added a beautiful word to the stock of English. Its adoption into the language was doubtless greatly favored by the general misunderstanding which saw in it a revival of an old English phrase.2 With these conclusions, there can be no dispute. But on one point it is possible to take issue with Dr. Walz - namely, the application 1 Pp. 217-226. 2 Id. p. 225. of the term to the old burial place at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue (formerly North Avenue) and Garden Street. "I do not know," says Dr. Walz, "who first called the old burial-ground in Cambridge 'God's Acre;' my earliest reference is Palfrey's History of New England, 1860, but the name cannot have been applied to it before 1841. There is not a scrap of evidence in the early records or town histories that the old Cambridge burying ground or any other burying ground in New England was ever called 'God's Acre' before the publication of Longfellow's poem, or that the phrase was at all known."1 When Dr. Walz was preparing his paper, he asked me whether I had noted instances of the term before 1841, and though I pointed out one or two from English travellers I was unable to adduce any from American sources. But since then three American examples have come to light. The earliest is the most interesting. Speaking of John Rogers, who was President of Harvard College from 1682 to 1684, Cotton Mather wrote in the Magnalia, printed in 1702: "But that the Character of this Gentleman may be more perfectly exhibited, we will here take the Leave to transcribe the Epitaph engraved on his Tomb, in God's-Acre, at Cambridge."2 In two other places in the same work Mather also mentions the Cambridge burial ground. Alluding to Charles Chauncy, who was President from 1654 to 1672, he says: "All that we will add of this Good Man, shall be the Epitaph, which is now to be read on his Tombstone in Cambridge." 3 And referring to Urian Oakes, who was President from 1675 to 1681, he remarks: "The Rest of the Report that we will give of this Memorable Person, shall be but a Transcript of the Epitaph on the Tomb-stone in the Sleeping-place at Cambridge, dedicated unto his Memory.' "4 After the lapse of more than a century and a quarter the term is again met with in Cambridge. In an article called "Historical 1 Id. p. 223. 2 Magnalia (1702), bk. iv. pt. i. § 5, p. 130. As is of course well known, much of the Magnalia had already appeared in print before the publication of the volume in London in 1702. The portions not previously printed must have been written before June 8, 1700, when Mather wrote: "I this Day putt up my Church-History, and pen down Directions about the publishing of it. A Gentleman, just now sailing for England, undertakes the care of it; and by his Hand I send it for London" (Diary, i. 353). • Bk. iii. pt. ii. ch. xxiii. § 12, p. 141. Bk. iv. pt. ii. ch. v. § 11, p. 188. |