The beginnings of New England : or, The Puritan theocracy in its relations to civil and religious liberty

Front matter

Alien County Public Library

3oIm jFtsfce's Writmfffi.

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS: Old Tales and Superstitions interpreted by Comparative Mythology. 22d Edition. Crown 8vo, $2.00.

Chapter I. The Roman Idea And The English Idea

Page

When did the Roman Empire come to an end ? . . . 1-3

Meaning of Odovakar's work 3

The Holy Roman Empire . . . . . . . 4, 5

Gradual shifting- of primacy from the men who spoke Latin,

and their descendants, to the men who speak English . 6-8 Political history is the history of nation-making . . . 8, 9 The Oriental method of nation-making ; conquest without incorporation . . . . . . . . . .9

Illustrations from eastern despotisms 10

And from the Moors in Spain 11

The Roman method of nation-making ; conquest with incorporation, but without representation . . . . .12

Its slow development 13

Vices in the Roman system . . . . . . .14

Its fundamental defect ........ 15

It knew nothing of political power delegated by the people to representatives . . . . . . . .16

And therefore the expansion of its dominion ended in a centralized despotism . . . . . . . . 16

Which entailed the danger that human life might come to stagnate in Europe, as it had done in Asia . . . .17

The danger was warded off by the Germanic invasions, which, however, threatened to undo the work which the Empire had done in organizing European society . . . .17

But such disintegration was prevented by the sway which the Roman Church had come to exercise over the European mind . . . . . . . . . - . 18

The wonderful thirteenth century . . . . . .19

The English method of nation-making ; incorporation with representation ......... 20

X

CONTENTS.

Pacific tendencies of federalism 21

Failure of Greek attempts at federation . . . .22

Fallacy of the notion that republics must he small . . 23 " It is not the business of a government to support its people, but of the people to support their government " .24 Teutonic March-meetings and representative assemblies . 25 Peculiarity of the Teutonic conquest of Britain . . 26, 27 Survival and development of the Teutonic representative assembly in England ........ 28

Primitive Teutonic institutions less modified in England than

in Germany ' . .29

Some effects of the Norman conquest of England . . 30 The Barons' War and the first House of Commons . . 31 Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty . . . .32

Conflict between Roman Idea and English Idea begins to become clearly visible in the thirteenth century . . .33 Decline of mediaeval Empire and Church with the growth of modern nationalities . . . . . . . 34

Overthrow of feudalism, and increasing power of the crown 35 Formidable strength of the Roman Idea . . . .36

Had it not been for the Puritans, political liberty would

probably have disappeared from the world . . .37 Beginnings of Protestantism in the thirteenth century . . 38 The Cathari, or Puritans of the Eastern Empire . . .39 The Albigenses ......... < 0

Effects of persecution ; its feebleness in England . . .41

Wyclif and the Lollards 42

Political character of Henry VIII. 's revolt against Rome . 43

The yeoman Hugh Latimer .44

The moment of Cromwell's triumph was the most critical

moment in history . .45

Contrast with France ; fate of the Huguenots . . 46, 47

Victory of the English Idea 48

Significance of the Puritan Exodus 49

Chapter II. The Puritan Exodus

Influence of Puritanism upon modern Europe . . 50, 51

Work of the Lollards 52

They made the Bible the first truly popular literature in

England 53, 54

The English version of the Bible . . . . . 54, 55

CONTENTS. xi

Secret of Henry VIII.' s swift success in his revolt against

Effects of the persecution under Mary . . . .57

Calvin's theology in its political bearings . . .58, 59 Elizabeth's policy and its effects ..... 60, 61

Puritan sea-rovers . . . . . . .. . .61

Geographical distribution of Puritanism in England ; it was

strongest in the eastern counties 62

Preponderance of East Anglia in the Puritan exodus . . 63 Familiar features of East Anglia to the visitor from New

England 64

Puritanism was not intentionally allied with liberalism . 65

Robert Brown and the Separatists 66

Persecution of the Separatists ...... 67

Recantation of Brown ; it was reserved for William Brewster

to take the lead in the Puritan exodus ... .68 James Stuart, and his encounter with Andrew Melville . 69

What James intended to do when he became King of England 70 His view of the political situation, as declared in the conference at Hampton Court ....... 71

The congregation of Separatists at Scrooby . . . .72

The flight to Holland, and settlement at Leyden in 1609 . 73 Systematic legal toleration in Holland . . . .74

Why the Pilgrims did not stay there ; they wished to keep

up their distinct organization and found a state . . 74 And to do this they must cross the ocean, because European territory was all preoccupied ...... 75

The London and Plymouth companies . . . . .75

First explorations of the New England coast ; Bartholomew Gosnold (1602), and George Weymouth (1605) ... 76

The Popham colony (1607) .77

Captain John Smith gives to New England its name (1614) . 78 The Pilgrims at Leyden decide to make a settlement near the Delaware river ........ 79

How King James regarded the enterprise . . . .80

Voyage of the Mayflower ; she goes astray and takes the Pilgrims to Cape Cod bay . . ...... 81

Founding of the Plymouth colony (1620) ... 82, 83 Why the Indians did not molest the settlers . . . 84, 85 The chief interest of this beginning of the Puritan exodus lies not so much in what it achieved as in what it suggested 86, 87 xii

CONTENTS.

Chapter III. The Planting Of New England

Sir Ferdinando Gorges and the Council for New England 88, 89 Wessagusset and Merrymount . . . . . 90, 91

The Dorchester adventurers ....... 92

John White wishes to " raise a bulwark against the Kingdom of Antichrist . . . . ... . . .93

And John Endicott undertakes the work of building it . .94 Conflicting grants sow seeds of trouble ; the Gorges and Mason claims .......... 94, 95

Endicott' s arrival in New England, and the founding of Salem 95 The Company of Massachusetts Bay ; Francis Higginson takes a powerful reinforcement to Salem . . . .96

The development of John White's enterprise into the Company of Massachusetts Bay coincided with the first four years of the reign of Charles I. . . . . . .97

Extraordinary scene in the House of Commons (June 5,

1628) 98, 99

The King turns Parliament out of doors (March 2, 1629) . 100 Desperate nature of the crisis ..... 100, 101 The meeting at Cambridge (Aug. 26, 1629), and decision to transfer the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company, and the government established under it, to New England . 102 Leaders of the great migration ; John Winthrop . . . 102

And Thomas Dudley 103

Founding of Massachusetts ; the schemes of Gorges overwhelmed .......... 104

Beginnings of American constitutional history ; the question

as to self-government raised at Watertown . . . 105 Representative system established ..... 106

Bicameral assembly ; story of the stray pig .... 107

Ecclesiastical polity ; the triumph of Separatism . . . 108 Restriction of the suffrage to members of the Puritan congregational churches ........ 109

Founding of Harvard College 110

Threefold danger to the New England settlers in 1636 : —

1. From the King, who prepares to attack the charter, but

is foiled by dissensions at home .... 111-113

2. From religious dissensions ; Roger Williams . 114-116 Henry Vane and Anne Hutchinson .... 116-119 Beginnings of New Hampshire and Rhode Island . 119-120

CONTENTS. xin

3. From, the Indians ; the Pequot supremacy . . .121 First movements into the Connecticut valley, and disputes

with the Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam . . 122, 123 Restriction of the suffrage leads to disaffection in Massachusetts ; profoundly interesting- opinions of Winthrop and

Connecticut pioneers and their hardships .... 125 Thomas Hooker, and the founding- of Connecticut . . 126 The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (Jan. 14, 1639) ;

the first written constitution that created a government . 127 Relations of Connecticut to the genesis of the Federal

Origin of the Pequot War ; Sassacus tries to unite the Indian

tribes in a crusade against the English . . . 129, 130 The schemes of Sassacus are foiled by Roger Williams . 130

The Pequots take the war path alone 131

And are exterminated ....... 132-134

John Davenport, and the founding of New Haven . . 135 New Haven legislation, and legend of the " Blue Laws" . 136 With the meeting of the Long Parliament, in 1640, the

Puritan exodus comes to its end 137

What might have been 138, 391

Chapter IV. The New England Confederacy

The Puritan exodus was purely and exclusively English . 140

And the settlers were all thrifty and prosperous ; chiefly country squires and yeomanry of the best and sturdiest type 141, 142

In all history there has been no other instance of colonization so exclusively effected by picked and chosen men . . 143

What, then, was the principle of selection ? The migration was not intended to promote what we call religious liberty 144, 145

Theocratic ideal of the Puritans ...... 146

The impulse which sought to realize itself in the Puritan ideal was an ethical impulse ...... 147

In interpreting Scripture, the Puritan appealed to his reason 148, 149

Value of such perpetual theological discussion as was carried on in early New England ..... 150, 151 xiv

CONTENTS.

Comparison with the history of Scotland .... 152 Bearing of these considerations upon the history of the New

England confederacy 153

The existence of so many colonies (Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Haven, Rhode Island, the Piscataqua towns, etc.) was due to differences of opinion on questions in which men's religious ideas were involved . 154 And this multiplication of colonies led to a notable and significant attempt at confederation ..... 155 Turbulence of dissent in Rhode Island . . . .156 The Earl of Warwick, and his Board of Commissioners . 157

Constitution of the Confederacy 158

It was only a league, not a federal union .... 159 Its formation involved a tacit assumption of sovereignty . 160 The fall of Charles I. brought up, for a moment, the question as to the supremacy of Parliament over the colonies . 161

Some interesting questions 162

Genesis of the persecuting spirit ...... 163

Samuel Gorton and his opinions 163-165

He flees to Aquedneck and is banished thence . . . 166 Providence protests against him . . . . . . 167

He flees to Shawomet, where he buys land of the Indians . 168

Miantonomo and Uncas 169, 170

Death of Miantonomo . . . . . . . .171

Edward Johnson leads an expedition against Shawomet . 172 Trial and sentence of the heretics ...... 173

Winthrop declares himself in a prophetic opinion . . . 174

The Presbyterian cabal 175-177

The Cambridge Platform ; deaths of Winthrop and Cotton . 177 Views of Winthrop and Cotton as to toleration in matters of religion . . . . . . ' . . . 178

After their death, the leadership in Massachusetts was in the

hands of Endicott and Norton 179

The Quakers ; their opinions and behavior . . . 179-181 Violent manifestations of dissent ...... 182

Anne Austin and Mary Fisher ; how they were received in

Boston . 183

The confederated colonies seek to expel the Quakers ; noble

attitude of Rhode Island . 184

Roger Williams appeals to his friend, Oliver Cromwell . 185 The " heavenly speech" of Sir Harry Vane .... 185 Laws passed against the Quakers . . . • . . . 186 How the death penalty was regarded at that time in New England 187

CONTENTS. xv

Executions of Quakers on Boston Common . . .188, 189 Wenloek Christison's defiance and victory . . . 189, 190 The ''King's Missive" . . . . . .191

"Why Charles II. interfered to protect the Quakers . . 191 His hostile feeling' toward the New England governments . 192 The regicide judges, Goffe and Whalley . . . 193, 194 New Haven annexed to Connecticut .... 194, 195

Abraham Pierson, and the founding of Newark . . . 196 Breaking-down of the theocratic policy . . . .197

Weakening of the Confederacy . . . . " . . 198

Chapter V. King Philip's Wak

Relations between the Puritan settlers and the Indians . . 199

Trade with the Indians 200

Missionary work ; Thomas Mayhew ..... 201 John Eliot and his translation of the Bible .... 202

His preaching to the Indians 203

His villages of Christian Indians ...... 204

The Puritan's intention was to deal gently and honourably

with the red men 205

Why Pennsylvania was so long unmolested by the Indians, 205, 206 Difficulty of the situation in New England .... 207 It is hard for the savage and the civilized man to understand

one another . . * . 208

How Eliot's designs must inevitably have been misinterpreted by the Indians . . . . . . . . 209

It is remarkable that peace should have been so long preserved ... ........ 210

Deaths of Massasoit and his son Alexander . . . .211

Very little is known about the nature of Philip's designs . 212 The meeting at Taunton ....... 213

Sausamon informs against Philip 213

And is murdered 214

Massacres at Swanzey and Dartmouth 214

Murder of Captain Hutchinson . . . . . .215

Attack on Brookfield, which is relieved by Simon Willard . 216 Fighting in the Connecticut valley ; the mysterious stranger

at Hadley 217, 218

Ambuscade at Bloody Brook 219

Popular excitement in Boston ..... 220 xvi

CONTENTS.

The Narragansetts prepare to take the war-path . . . 221 And Governor Winslow leads an army against them . 222, 223 Storming of the great swamp fortress ..... 224

Slaughter of the Indians 225

Effect of the blow . . . . . . . .226

Growth of the humane sentiment in recent times, due to the fact that the horrors of war are seldom brought home to

everybody's door 227, 228

Warfare with savages is likely to be truculent in character . 229 Attack upon Lancaster ........ 230

Mrs. Rowlandson's narrative ...... 231-233

Virtual extermination of the Indians (February to August, 1676) 233, 234

Death of Canonchet 234

Philip pursued by Captain Church 235

Death of Philip 236

Indians sold into slavery ....... 237

Conduct of the Christian Indians 238

War with the Tarratines 239

Frightful destruction of life and property .... 240 Henceforth the red man figures no more in the history of New England, except in frontier raids under French guidance . . . . . . . . ... 241

Chapter VI. The Tyranny Of Andkos

Romantic features in the early history of New England . 242 Captain Edward Johnson, of Woburn, and his book on "The Wonder-working Providence of Zion's Saviour in New

Acts of the Puritans often judged by an unreal and impossible standard 245

Spirit of the " Wonder-working Providence " . . . 246 Merits and faults of the Puritan theocracy .... 247 Restriction of the suffrage to church members . , . 248

It was a source of political discontent 249

Inquisitorial administration of justice 250

The " Halfway Covenant " 251

Founding of the Old South church 252

Unfriendly relations between Charles II. and Massachusetts 253

Complaints against Massachusetts ...... 254

CONTENTS. xvii

The Lords of Trade 255

Arrival of Edward Randolph in Boston .... 256 Joseph Dudley and the beginnings of Toryism in New England 257, 258

Charles II. erects the four Piscataqua towns into the royal

province of New Hampshire 259

And quarrels with Massachusetts over the settlement of the

Gorges claim to the Maine district ..... 260 Simon Bradstreet and his verse-making wife .... 261 Massachusetts answers the king's peremptory message . . 262 Secret treaty between Charles II. and Louis XIV. . . 263

Shameful proceedings in England 264

Massachusetts refuses to surrender her charter ; and accordingly it is annulled by decree of chancery, June 21, 1684 . 265 Effect of annulling the charter ...... 266

Death of Charles II., accession of James II., and appointment of Sir Edmund Andros as viceroy over New England, with despotic powers ........ 267

The charter oak 268

Episcopal services in Boston • . f . . . 268, 269 Founding of the King's Chapel ...... 269

The tyranny .270

John Wise of Ipswich . . . . . . . . 271

Fall of James II .271

Insurrection in Boston, and overthrow of Andros . . . 272

Effects of the Revolution of 1689 273

Need for union among all the northern colonies . . . 274 Plymouth, Maine, and Acadia annexed to Massachusetts . 275

Which becomes a royal province 276

And is thus brought into political sympathy with Virginia . 276 The seeds of the American Revolution were already sown, and the spirit of 1776 was foreshadowed in 1689 . 277, 278

THE

BEGINNINGS OF NEW ENGLAND.

Chapter I. The Roman Idea And The English Idea

It used to be the fashion of historians, looking superficially at the facts presented in chronicles and tables of dates, without analyzing and comparing vast groups of facts distributed through centuries, or even suspecting the need for such analysis and comparison, to assign the date 476 A. D. as the moment at which the Roman Empire came to an end. It was in that year that the soldier of fortune, Odovakar, commander of the Herulian mercenaries in Italy, sent the handsome boy Romulus, son of Orestes, better known as " little Augustus," from his imperial throne to the splendid villa of Lucullus near Naples, and gave him a yearly pension of 835,000 [6,000 solidi] to console him for the loss of a world. As 324 years elapsed before another emperor was crowned at Rome, when did the and as the political headship of Europe pire come to after that happy restoration remained upon the German soil to which the events of the eighth century had shifted it, nothing could seem more natural than the habit which historians once had, of saying that the mighty career of Rome had ended, as it had begun, with a Romulus. Sometimes the date 476 was even set up as a great landmark dividing modern from ancient history. For those, however, who took such a view, it was impossible to see the events of the Middle Ages in their true relations to what went before and what came after. It was impossible to understand what went on in Italy in the sixth century, or to explain the position of that great Roman power which had its centre on the Bosphorus, which in the code of Justinian left us our grandest monument of Roman law, and which for a thousand years was the staunch bulwark of Europe against the successive aggressions of Persian, Saracen, and Turk. It was equally impossible to understand the rise of the Papal power, the all-important politics of the great Saxon and Swabian emperors, the relations of mediaeval England to the Continental powers, or the marvellously interesting growth of the modern European system of nationalities.

Since the middle of the nineteenth century the study of history has undergone changes no less sweeping than those which have in the same time affected the study of the physical sciences. Vast groups of facts distributed through various ages and countries have been subjected to comparison and analysis, with the result that they have not only thrown fresh light upon one another, but have in many cases enabled us to recover historic points of view that had long been buried in oblivion. Such an instance was furnished about twenty-five

ROMAN IDEA AND ENGLISH IDEA.

years ago by Dr. Bryce's epoch-making work on the Holy Roman Empire. Since then historians still recognize the importance of the date .„ .

° A Meaning of

476 as that which left the Bishop of odovakar's

*- work.

Rome the dominant personage in Italy, and marked the shifting of the political centre of gravity from the Palatine to the Lateran. This was one of those subtle changes which escape notice until after some of their effects have attracted attention. The most important effect, in this instance, realized after three centuries, was not the overthrow of Roman power in the West, but its indefinite extension and expansion. The men of 476 not only had no idea that they were entering upon a new era, but least of all did they dream that the Roman Empire had come to an end, or was ever likely to. Its cities might be pillaged, its provinces overrun, but the supreme imperial power itself was something without which the men of those days could not imagine the world as existing. It must have its divinely ordained representative in one place if not in another. If the throne in Italy was vacant, it was no more than had happened before ; there was still a throne at Constantinople, and to its occupant Zeno the Roman Senate sent a message, saying that one emperor was enough for both ends of the earth, and begging him to confer upon the gallant Odovakar the title of patrician, and entrust the affairs of Italy to his care. So when Sicambrian Chlodwig set up his Merovingian kingdom in northern Gaul, he was glad to array himself in the robe of a Roman consul, and obtain from the eastern emperor a formal ratification of his rule.

Countless examples show that the event of 476 was understood as the virtual reunion of West and East under a single head ; whereas, on the other hand, the impressive scene in the basilica of St. Peter's on the Christmas of 800, when Pope Leo III. placed the diadem of the Caesars upon the Prankish brow of Charles the Great, was regarded, not as the restoration of an empire once extinguished, but as a new separation between East and West, a re-transfer of the world's political centre from the Bosphorus to the Tiber. When after two The Holy Ro- centuries more the sceptre had passed man Empire. f rom feke Hl]e of Prankish Charles to the

line of Saxon Otto, this Holy Roman Empire, shaped by the alliance of German king with Italian pontiff, acquired such consistency as to outlast the whole group of political conditions in which it originated. These conditions endured for five centuries after the coronation in 800 ; the empire preserved a continuous existence for yet five centuries more. Until after the downfall of the great Hohenstauffen emperors, late in the thirteenth century, soon followed by the Babylonish exile of the popes at Avignon, the men of western Europe felt themselves in a certain sense members of a political whole of which Pome was the centre. By the beginning of the sixteenth century this feeling had almost disappeared. Men's world had enlarged till Rome no longer seemed so great to them as it had seemed to their forefathers who had lived under its mighty spell, or as it seems to us who view it through the lenses of history. Within its own imperial domains powerful nations had slowly grown up, whose speech would have sounded strange to Cicero ; while beyond ocean were found new lands where the name of Caesar had never been heard. By the side of Louis XII. or Ferdinand of Aragon, it was not easy to recognize a grander dignity in the Hapsburg successor of Augustus % and the mutterings of revolt against papal supremacy already heralded the storm which was soon to rend all Christendom in twain. After the Eeformation, the conception of a universal Christian monarchy, as held whether by St. Augustine or by Dante, had ceased to have a meaning and faded from men's memories. Yet in its forms and titles the Holy Roman Empire continued to survive, until, as Voltaire said, it had come to be neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. So long did it remain upon the scene that in 1790 an illustrious American philosopher, Benjamin Thompson, a native of Woburn in Massachusetts and sometime dweller in Rumford, New Hampshire, was admitted to a share in its dignities as Count Rumford. When at length in 1806, among the sweeping changes wrought by the battle of Austerlitz, the Emperor Francis II. resigned his position as head of the Germanic body, there were perhaps few who could have told why that head should have been called emperor rather than king ; fewer still, no doubt, who realized that the long succession of Caesars had now first come to an end.

I cite this final date of 1806 as interesting, but not as important, in connection with a political system which had already quite ceased to exist, save in so far as one might say that the spirit of it still survives in political methods and habits of thought that will yet be long in dying out. With great political systems, as with typical forms of organic life, the processes of development and of extinction are exceedingly slow, and it is seldom that the stages can be sharply marked by dates. The Gradual shift- processes which have gradually shifted £om the meny the seat of empire until the prominent Latinfand part played nineteen centuries ago by

their descend- i a i i • • i

ants, to the ±£ome and Alexandria, on opposite sides speak English, of the Mediterranean, has been at length assumed by London and New York, on opposite sides of the Atlantic, form a most interesting subject of study. But to understand them, one must do much more than merely catalogue the facts of political history ; one must acquire a knowledge of the drifts and tendencies of human thought and feeling and action from the earliest ages to the times in which we live. In covering so wide a field we cannot of course expect to obtain anything like complete results. In order to make a statement simple enough to be generally intelligible, it is necessary to pass over many circumstances and many considerations that might in one way and another qualify what we have to say. Nevertheless it is quite possible for us to discern, in their bold general outlines, some historic truths of supreme importance. In contemplating the salient features of the change which has now for a long time been making the world more English and less Roman, we shall find not only intellectual pleasure and profit but practical guidance. For in order to understand this slow but mighty change, we must

ROMAN IDEA AND ENGLISH IDEA.

look a little into that process of nation-making which has been going on since prehistoric ages and is going on here among us to-day, and from the recorded experience of men in times long past we may gather lessons of infinite value for ourselves and for our children's children. As in all the achievements of mankind it is only after much weary experiment and many a heart-sickening failure that success is attained, so has it been especially with nation-making. Skill in the political art is the fruit of ages of intellectual and moral discipline ; and just as picture-writing had to come before printing and canoes before steamboats, so the cruder political methods had to be tried and found wanting, amid the tears and groans of unnumbered generations, before methods less crude could be put into operation. In the historic survey upon which we are now to enter, we shall see that the Roman Empire represented a crude method of nation-making which began with a masterful career of triumph over earlier and cruder methods, but has now for several centuries been giving way before a more potent and satisfactory method. And just as the merest glance at the history of Europe shows us Germanic peoples wresting the supremacy from Rome, so in this deeper study we shall discover a grand and far-reaching Teutonic Idea of political life overthrowing and supplanting the Roman Idea. Our attention will be drawn toward England as the battle-ground and the seventeenth century as the critical moment of the struggle ; we shall see in Puritanism the tremendous militant force that determined the issue ;

and when our perspective has thus become properlyadjusted, we shall begin to realize for the first time how truly wonderful was the age that witnessed the Beginnings of New England. We have long had before our minds the colossal figure of Koman Julius as " the foremost man of all this world," but as the seventeenth century recedes into the past the figure of English Oliver begins to loom up as perhaps even more colossal. In order to see these world-events in their true perspective, and to make perfectly clear the manner in which we are to estimate them, we must go a long distance away from them. We must even go back, as nearly as may be, to the beginning of things.

If we look back for a moment to the primitive stages of society, we may picture to ourselves the surface of the earth sparsely and scantily covered with wandering tribes of savages, rude in morals and manners, narrow and monotonous in experience, sustaining life very much as lower animals sustain it, by gathering wild fruits or slaying wild game, and waging chronic warfare alike with powerful beasts and with rival tribes of men. In Political his- tne wi^est sense the subject of political toryoVn'ation- history ^ the description of the promaking, cesses by which, under favourable circumstances, innumerable such primitive tribes have become welded together into mighty nations, with elevated standards of morals and manners, with wide and varied experience, sustaining life and ministering to human happiness by elaborate arts and sciences, and putting a curb upon warfare by limiting its scope, diminishing its cruelty, and interrupting it by intervals of peace. The story, as laid before us in the records of three thousand years, is fascinating and absorbing in its human interest for those who content themselves with the study of its countless personal incidents, and neglect its profound philosophical lessons. But for those who study it in the scientific spirit, the human interest of its details becomes still more intensely fascinating and absorbing. Battles and coronations, poems and inventions, migrations and martyrdoms, acquire new meanings and awaken new emotions as we begin to discern their bearings upon the solemn work of ages that is slowly winning for humanity a richer and more perfect life. By such meditation upon men's thoughts and deeds is the understanding purified, till we become better able to comprehend our relations to the world and the duty that lies upon each of us to shape his conduct rightly.