tion we are chiefly impressed with the remarkable degree in which the mass of the people exhibited the kind of political training that nothing in the world except the habit of parliamentary discussion can impart; on the other hand, Virginia at that time gave us in Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Mason, Madison, and Marshall, to mention no others such a group of leaders as has seldom been equaled.

A comparative survey of Old Virginia's neighbors shows how extremely loose and inaccurate is the common habit of alluding to the Old Cavalier society of England as if it were characteristic of the southern states in general. Equally loose and ignorant is the habit of alluding to Puritanism as if it were peculiar to England. In point of fact the Cavalier society was reproduced nowhere save on Chesapeake Bay. On the other hand, the English or Independent phase of Puritanism was by no means confined to the New England colonies. Three fourths of the people of Maryland were Puritans; English Puritanism, with the closely kindred French Calvinism, swayed South Carolina; and in our concluding chapter we shall see how the Scotch or Presbyterian phase of Puritanism extended throughout the whole length of the Appalachian region, from Pennsylvania to Georgia, and has exercised in the southwest an influence always great and often predominant. In the South today there is much more Puritanism surviving than in New England.

THE PURITANS1

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY (1800-1859)

The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know Him, to serve Him, to enjoy Him, was with them the great end of existence. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on His intolerable brightness, and to commune with Him face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The difference between the greatest and the meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from Him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. They recognized no title to superiority but His favor; and, confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials,

1 From the "Essay on Milton," in Works of Lord Macaulay, Vol. V. Published by Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1866.

legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems, crowns of glory which should never fade away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt: for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged, on whose slightest action the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest, who had been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away. Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes, had been ordained on his account. For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed His will by the pen of the Evangelist, and the harp of the prophet. He had been wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had risen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God.

Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion; the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was half-maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard

He

the lyres of angels, or the tempting whispers of fiends. caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane,' he thought himself intrusted with the scepter of the millennial year. Like Fleetwood,2 he cried in the bitterness of his soul that God had hid His face from him. But when he took his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. People who saw nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but their groans and their whining hymns, might laugh at them. But those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall of debate or in the field of battle. These fanatics brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of judgment and an immutability of purpose which some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which were in fact the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them tranquil on every other. One overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear.. Death had lost its terrors and pleasure its charms. They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm had made them Stoics, had cleared their minds from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised, them above the influence of danger and corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. They

1 Sir Harry Vane, a Puritan statesman and patriot, governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1636-1637. Because of disagreement with the colonial religious policy, he returned to England in 1637 and later was prominent in the Puritan Commonwealth, at times opposing Cromwell's rule. He was executed at the Restoration. 2 A statesman and general under the Puritan Commonwealth.

went through the world like Sir Artegal's 1 iron man Talus with his flail, crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling with human beings, but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities; insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain, not to be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier.

THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS 2 FELICIA DOROTHEA BROWNE HEMANS (1793-1835)

The breaking waves dashed high

On a stern and rockbound coast,
And the woods against a stormy sky

Their giant branches tossed.

And the heavy night hung dark

The hills and waters o'er,

When a band of exiles moored their bark
On the wild New England shore.

Not as the conqueror comes,

They, the true-hearted, came,

Not with the roll of the stirring drums,
And the trumpet that sings of fame;

Not as the flying come,

In silence and in fear;

They shook the depths of the desert gloom
With their hymns of lofty cheer.

1 The knight errant, Sir Artegal, in Spenser's "Faery Queene," personified justice. He was attended by an iron man called Talus, who carried a flail "with which he thrashed out falsehood and did truth unfold.”

2 From works of Mrs. Hemans, Vol. V. Published by Lea & Blanchard, 1840.