and Jeremy Taylor, Cudworth and Hobbes, Drake, Raleigh, Sydney, Coke, and Selden, Harvey, Napier, and Buchanan, whose memorable names suggest some of the highest attainments of the human mind, in poetry, theology, philosophy, law, science, and literature. Nor should we omit to mention the publication of the first English newspaper, in Queen Elizabeth's reign, the origin of a power of immense efficacy, both for good and for evil.

Whoever would desire to know some of the best and brightest thoughts of English writers, expressed in the full energy and beauty of our language, must study the writings of the century succeeding the Reformation. One noble and invaluable specimen of the pure racy English style of the men of those days is in the hands of all the translation of the Bible.

From the bosom of a society so far advanced in knowledge and civilization, so rich in genius, so characterised by masculine vigour and by the unmixed peculiarities of our nation; containing so much matured excellence, and so many germs of future greatness, the first British colonists of North America went forth.

Queen Elizabeth gave a name to Virginia, but no permanent colony was established during her reign. In the year 1607 a small band of emigrants landed there. They were of the higher order of society in England, and members of the Established Church, and were accompanied by an exemplary and esteemed clergyman. Religious considerations had induced them to quit their native country; and they described their settlement on a continent, inhabited by wild Indians, as a work "which by the providence of God might tend to the glory of his Divine Majesty, and the propagating of the Christian religion." They soon built an episcopal church, on a peninsula which projects from the northern shore of James' River. Its ruins,

and the tombs around it, still remain, the only memorial of Jamestown, the first English settlement in the New World.

The first settlers in New England landed thirteen years afterwards. The greater part of them were neither of the aristocratic nor of the lower and poorer class, but they were educated persons of the middle ranks of English society, sober, industrious, devout, and strictly moral. That system of local government in parishes and towns, which originated with our Saxon ancestors, and lies at the foundation of British liberty, then existed in considerable perfection in England. During the long-continued political contests of those times, the colonists had gained an experimental knowledge of the principles of civil liberty; and the tendency of their political opinions was towards republicanism. Religion was a subject of earnest consideration with them, and they had taken a deep interest in the theological controversies of that period. The settlers in New England were Puritans, a name given to them on account of the severity of their manners, and their claims to strict purity of worship and discipline. There was a stern sincerity in their attachment to their opinions, which almost amounted to bigotry. They were ready to suffer for conscience sake; and in the school of adversity they had learned to value the rights of conscience, and to know something of the principles of toleration. They derived the elements of civil and religious liberty from the institutions of their native country. But having been oppressed and persecuted, they forsook their homes, and with their families they sought independence in the savage deserts of North America.

What sought they thus afar?
Bright jewels of the mine-

The wealth of seas-the spoils of war?
They sought a faith's pure shrine.*

The Rev. Cotton Mather, an evangelical minister of Boston, in his Ecclesiastical History of New England,

* "There was in the principles of the Puritans nothing of philosophy, either in the good sense of the word or the bad. And it is also most unjust to charge them with irreverence or want of humility. They received the scriptures as God's word, and they followed them implicitly. Neither do they seem chargeable with establishing nice distinctions, in order to evade their obvious meaning; their fault seems rather to have lain in the other extreme; they acquiesced in the obvious and literal meaning too unhesitatingly. Nor yet were they wanting in respect for all human authority, as trusting in their own wisdom and piety only. On the contrary, the decisions of the earlier church with respect to the great Christian doctrines, they received without questioning; they by no means took the scriptures into their hands, and sat down to make a new creed of their own out of them. They disregarded the church only where the church departed from the obvious sense of scripture; I do not say the true sense, but the obvious one. The difference as to their moral character is considerable: because he who maintains another than the obvious sense of scripture against other men, may indeed be perfectly right, but he is liable to the charge, whether grave or frivolous as it may be, of preferring his own interpretation to that of the church. But maintaining the obvious sense, even if it be the wrong one, he can hardly be charged himself with arrogance; he may with greater plausibility retort the charge on his opponents, that they are substituting the devices of their own ingenuity for the plain sense of the word of God....... The Puritans wished to alter the existing church system for one which they believed to be freer and better; and so far they resembled a common popular party: but inasmuch as in this and all other matters their great principle was conformity to scripture, and they pushed this to an extravagant excess, because their interpretation of scripture was continually faulty, there was, together with their free political spirit, a narrow spirit in things religious which shocked not only the popular party of the succeeding age, but many even in their own day, who politically entertained opinions far narrower than theirs."Dr. ARNOLD'S Introductory Lectures on Modern History.

published in 1698, says: "There were more than a few attempts of the English to people and improve the parts of New England which were to the northward of New Plymouth; but the designs of those attempts being aimed no higher than the advancement of some worldly interests, a constant series of disasters has confounded them, until there was a plantation erected upon the nobler designs of Christianity; and that plantation, though it has had more adversaries than perhaps any upon earth, yet having obtained help from God, it continues to this day." The emigrants were about one hundred and fifty in number; and after an unfavourable and tempestuous voyage, they were compelled to land on that part of the New England coast, where the town of Plymouth is now built. The rock on which they landed is an object of great curiosity and veneration in the United States. As soon as they had landed they passed the following act:-"In the name of God, ainen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord, King James, having undertaken, for the glory of God, and the advancement of the Christian faith, and the honour of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia; do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politick, for our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid," &c. This social contract was drawn up in 1620, and the emigrants who founded other settlements in New England, soon afterwards acted in a similar

manner.

Never was a colony planted with less apparent prospect of success, but with higher and holier aims; and the result is a glorious and instructive lesson to nations: for may not the words of the inspired prophet be

applied historically to that people, "A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation. I the Lord will hasten it in his time."

Let an American statesman, Mr. Everett, the present ambassador to England from the United States, eloquently describe the humble origin and future greatness of his country:-" Shut now the volume of history, and tell me on any principle of human probability, what shall be the fate of this handful of adventurers? Tell me, man of military science, in how many months were they all swept off by the thirty savage tribes enumerated within the early limits of New England? Tell me, politician, how long did this shadow of a colony, on which your conventions and treaties had not smiled, languish on the distant coast? Student of history, compare for me the baffled projects, the deserted settlements, the abandoned adventures of other times, and find the parallel of this. Was it the winter's storm, beating upon the houseless heads of women and children? was it hard labour and spare meals? was it disease? was it the tomahawk ? was it the deep malady of a blighted hope, a ruined enterprize, and a broken heart, aching in its last moments at the recollection of the loved and left beyond the sea? was it some, or all of these united, that hurried this forsaken company to their melancholy fate? And is it possible that neither of these causes-that not all combined, were able to blast this bud of hope? Is it possible that, from a beginning so feeble, so frail, so worthy not so much of admiration as of pity, there has gone forth a progress so steady, a growth so wonderful, a reality so important, a promise yet to be fulfilled so glorious?"

The number of settlers increased by arrivals from

Europe almost every year. Rhode Island was purchased from the Indians about the year 1638. Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Maine were founded