verses on Bacon's death, containing some trenchant, if tough, lines, e.g. "Virginia's foes, To whom, for secret crimes, just vengeance owes Him to destroy. Will want the aid of his commanding tongue, Which conquered more than Cæsar." In this scattered feudal society, there were neither the inducements nor the opportunities for any varied development of speculative thought or artistic criticism; and the spirit of Sir William Berkeley's prayer, "I thank God we have no free schools here nor printing . . . God keep us from both!" continued to inspire it. The first press in the Old Dominion dates from 1681, the second only from 1766, and neither had much to do. In 1693 the Scotch immigrant, Blair, had the honour of founding the College of William and Mary, but it continued, in practice, to be no more than a high-class secondary school. Of Virginian writers previous to the time of the Revolution, it only remains, in our rapid survey, to mention Robert Beverley-the first and perhaps the most lively historian of the colony — and William Byrd, who, being employed to fix the bounds between Virginia and North Carolina, diverged from the lines of an official record, to assail with vigorous invective the inhabitants of the younger and rival settlement a settlement of which John Lawson had previously, with equal unreserve, celebrated the praises. Maryland is, during the same period, somewhat unpleasantly, represented in literature by the verse satire of Ebenezer Cook, which, though mainly written in the Hudibrastic jingle so often a model to early American versifiers, seems in its best passages nearer to the original than other contemporary imitations. The following is, in the space, one of the keenest travesties of the besetting sin of a sect singularly free from "sins of blood"-a sect, on both sides of the Atlantic, that has passed by thrift and perseverance through persecution to prosperity; that, as others, had and has its hypocrites as well as its saints and martyrs. "To this intent,1 with guide before, I tripped it to the eastern shore. As e'er wore bonnet or a brogue; 2 Who neither swore nor kept his word, But cheated, in the fear of God; And, when his debts he would not pay, By light within he ran away." South Carolina (settled 1669), unconscious of her future rôle as the great political protagonist of Massachusetts, gives, during this period, a somewhat thin contribution to controversy in the attacks on Whitfield by Alexander Garden, who complains, in one salient sentence, that rational religion is "crucified between two thieves-Infidelity and Enthusiasm;" while Georgia, the latest of the Southern group, an afterbirth of General Oglethorpe's philanthropy (1733), bites her founder's hand, in the pointed polemic against his administration by his adversaries Anderson, Douglass, and Tailfer. The great colonies New York and New Jersey (made English in 1664), Pennsylvania and Delaware (established, in 1682, on Penn's new principle of driving bargains with the natives instead of massacring them)—have, during the seventeenth and early years of the eighteenth centuries, even less to show of general literary interest. A few sermons, descriptions of Indians, accounts of events, and bad verses, make up the list; but here and there there are, in these scattered leaves, traces of the cosmopolitan spirit that afterwards characterised this central group. 1 To buy and sell. 2 Dutch, brock, meaning breeches. Meanwhile, on the north of the same coast-line, other settlements had been made, on other conditions. In 1620, -shortly after the fateful black cargo had been discharged on a bank of the James river, the Pilgrim Fathers, setting sail from Holland, their eleven years' halting-place, had landed at New Plymouth. They were followed, in 1628, by the first settlers of Massachusetts Bay; in 1629, by those of New Hampshire. In 1630, a larger importation of men, of more wealth and higher station, came over under Winthrop. The next decade, that immediately preceding our civil war, saw the foundation of Connecticut, and the arrival of a throng of exiles, mainly inspired by the same spirit. With a sprinkling of adventurers, like the early Virginians, the great majority were religious refugees or political enthusiasts who had been driven, by hate or fear of Strafford and Laud, from their farms or country seats, tabernacles or universities, in the Old England, to plant their feet and faith firmly on the shores of the New, and endeavour to establish there an ideal commonwealth. This commonwealth was an almost literal realisation of the desire of the most thorough-going Puritans at home. The men who stayed behind, to fight at Marston Moor and Dunbar, were idealists; but even they were constrained, in some degree, to adapt their practice to the requirements of tradition, and the force of circumstance, in an already complex society they had to yield to the practical genius of a beneficent despot, and accept the author of the Areopagitica as their secretary of state. The men who followed Miles Standish and Endicott and John Winthrop across the seas and against the Indians, were able, with scarce a trammel, to thrust to its conclusion their theory of life. Extremists, with no hindrance but their hard physical environment, they were able to break with all the Past, save that of the Hebrews, and put into practice a policy more rigid than that of the Ironsides. In their early history there are two dominant features a force of character, half bodily half spiritual, rarely equalled, never surpassed, and a fervid, almost ferocious, narrowness of mind that would have shocked Luther, staggered Knox, and satisfied Calvin. Their personal intrepidity was equal to that of De Soto's pioneers or Drake's seamen; and it was inspired by a purpose more persistent, in part at least because it was animated by a belief in realities beyond the range of material vision. The little wooden towns, guarded by the pike and matchlock and piety of men, putting their trust in God and keeping their powder dry, within a generation after the landing of the Mayflower, had developed into the "United Colonies of New England," destined to form the intellectual and moral backbone of Anglo-America. But from this early federation on whose model in some respects that of a continent has been framed— one colony, Rhode Island, was excluded, because it would not accept the practical principles of tyranny to which these early fanatics for theoretic freedom stubbornly clung. The men who left the green lanes of Kent and Sussex for the bleak rocks of Cape Cod, were martyrs for conscience sake; but what their conscience demanded was permission to hold and preach "the truth," by no means liberty of thought. The worst and surest lesson of persecution-how to persecute-they had learnt by heart; and their only rivals (within the domain of semi-civilisation), in the practice and precept of intolerance, are to be found among the Inquisitors of Spain or the Scottish Covenanters. The literature, outside of that concerned with the interests, arguments, and battles of their faith, is a mere fringe on the life of the community entrusted to their care. It consists of description and narrative, the best passages of which rise to the dignity of prose-poetry or of history, and a few scattered verses. Enough, under the first head, remains to show that the susceptibility of the old northern voyagers to the fresh impres sions and aspects of animate and inanimate nature was in no way inferior to that of the southern. We have many pages about the wonders and mysteries of the great deep, over which their writers crossed; the wildernesses they had to traverse; the strange races they encountered; descriptions of new plants and birds and fishes, that relieve the stress and strain of controversy, and show us, by glimpses, a heart within the breast of those cast-iron men. Such passages as these are frequent in William Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation, a MS. lost, till it was found in 1855 in the Fulham Library, and meanwhile plundered by his nephew, Nathaniel Norton. On leaving Leyden (1820), Bradford 6 writes "So they left that goodly and pleasant city, which had been their resting-place near twelve years; but they knew they were pilgrims, and looked not so much on those things, but lift up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits." And on reaching Plymouth "Being thus arrived in a good harbour, and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven, who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable land, their proper element. And no marvel if they were thus joyful, seeing wise Seneca was so affected with sailing a few miles on the coast of his own Italy, as he affirmed, that he had rather remain twenty years on his way by land than pass by sea in a short time, so tedious and dreadful was the same unto him." Nine years later Francis Higginson, after being "horribly tossed" by the waves, similarly rejoices "June 24th. This day we had all a clear and comfortable sight of America. June 29th.-As we passed along, it was wonderful to behold so many islands replenished with thick wood and high trees, and many fair green pastures. . . . Those that love their own chimney corner, and dare not go beyond their own town's end, shall never have the honour to see these wonderful works of the Almighty God." William Wood draws a like pleasant picture of the haven of Massachusetts Bay; and after a prevalent fashion, intersperses |