And here it is proper that the reader's attention should be momentarily
diverted to the American branch of this family, at the head of which
stands the Hon. Josiah Quincy, (the aristocratic _De_ being omitted,)--a
branch which fled from England in the early part of the seventeenth
century, to avoid a strife which had then become too intense and fiery
to admit of reconciliation, and which, indeed, a few years after their
withdrawal, culminated in civil war. As illustrating the inevitableness
of any great moral issue, no matter how vast the distance which at a
critical moment we may put between it and ourselves,--as indicating how
surely the Nemesis, seemingly avoided, but really only postponed, will
continue to track our flying footsteps, even across the barren wastes of
ocean, that ought, if anything could, to interpose an effectual barrier
between us and all pursuers, and, having caught up with us in our
fancied retreat, will precipitate upon our devoted heads its
accumulated violence,--as demonstrating thus the melancholy persistence
with which that ugly Sphinx who impersonates Justice in our human
affairs doggedly insists on having her questions answered, and, coming
by a circuitous route upon those who by good luck have escaped her
direct path, through an incarnation of unusual terror compels her dread
alternative,--it is interesting to note how this same family, separated
by over seven generations from one political revolution, the momentous
crisis of which was by them successfully evaded, are now, after an
interval of unsound and hollow peace, compelled to witness the precise
reiteration of that storm, in the very land to which they fled for
refuge,--a reiteration that repeats, only on a different stage, and
under an aggravation of horror as to minute details, not merely two
antagonistic races corresponding on either side to those which met in
battle on Marston Moor, but also interests far outweighing any that
could possibly attach to a conflict between royalty and democracy.