Pennsylvania, still retains. But there is no such scene of contentment in our pioneer history as that which the early annals of "Penn's Woods" (Pennsylvania) record. Other great changes were meanwhile taking place. New Hampshire and New Jersey came to be recognized as colonies by themselves; the union of the New England colonies was dissolved; Plymouth was merged in Massachusetts, New Haven in Connecticut, Delaware temporarily in Pennsylvania. At the close of the period which I have called the second generation (1700) there were ten distinct English colonies along the coast-New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Carolina. It is a matter of profound interest to observe that whatever may be the variations among these early settlements, we find everywhere the distinct traces of the old English village communities, which again are traced by Freeman and others to a Swiss or German origin. The founders of the first New England towns did not simply settle themselves upon the principle of "squatter sovereignty," each for himself; but they founded municipal organizations, based on a common control of the land. So systematically was this carried out that in an old town like Cambridge, Massachusetts, for instance, it would be easy at this day, were all the early tax lists missing, to determine the comparative worldly condition of the different settlers simply by comparing the proportion which each had to maintain of the great "pallysadoe" or paling which surrounded the little settlement. These amounts varied from seventy rods, in case of the richest, to two rods, in case of the poorest; and so well was the work done that the traces of the "fosse" about the paling still remain in the willow-trees on the play-ground of the Harvard students. These early settlers simply reproduced, with a few necessary modifications, those local institutions which had come to them from remote ancestors. The town paling, the town meeting, the town common, the town pound, the fence-viewers, the fielddrivers, the militia muster, even the tipstaves of the constables, are "survivals" of institutions older than the Norman conquest of England. Even the most matter-of-fact transactions of their daily life, as the transfer of land by giving a piece of turf, an instance of which occurred at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1696, sometimes carry us back to usages absolutely mediaval-in this case to the transfer "by turf and twig" so familiar to historians. All that the New England settlers added to their traditional institutions-and it was a great addition-was the system of common schools. Beyond New England the analogies with inherited custom are, according to Professor Freeman, less clear and unmistakable; but Professor Herbert B. Adams has lately shown that the Southern "parish" and "county," the South Carolina " 'court-greens" and common pastures," as well as the Maryland “manors" and "court-leets," all represent the same inherited principle of communal sovereignty. All these traditional institutions are now being carefully studied, with promise of the most interesting results, by a rising school of historical students in the United States. 66 The period which I have assigned to the second generation in America may be considered to have lasted from 1650 to 1700. Even during this period there took place collisions of purpose and interest between the home government and the colonies. The contest for the charters, for instance, and the short-lived power of Sir Edmund Andros, occurred within the time which has here been treated, but they were the forerunners of a later contest, and will be included in another paper. It will then be necessary to describe the gradual transformation which made colonies into provinces, and out of a varied emigration developed a homogeneous and cohering people; which taught the English ministry to distrust the Americans, and caused the Americans to be unconsciously weaned from England; so that the tie which at first had expressed only affection became at last a hated yoke, soon to be thrown aside forever. THY LOVE. IT brightens all the cruel gloom FAIR CHATTERTON AND HIS ASSOCIATES. AIR women and fellow-bards have the light in Bristol, on the 20th Novemgenerally been the associates of poets, but Chatterton knew little of either, save by repute. He imagined an ideal world, and peopled it with the creations of his own vivid fancy, but the real folk he lived among and associated with were, without exception, of the most conventional type. The posthumous son of a poor school-master, Chatterton first saw ber, 1752, in the humble dwelling where his father had died three months previous. Mrs. Chatterton was only twenty at the time of her son's birth, and was already burdened with the support of another child, a girl of about two years old. Soon after the birth of her son, who was christened Thomas after his deceased father, the widow removed from the free school BIRTH-PLACE OF CHATTERTON. in Pyle Street to a house on Redcliffe Hill, where, henceforward, by keeping school and by her needle, she strove to provide for her little family. As her boy grew in years, finding herself unable to teach him anything, she sent him to Mr. Love, who then held the post of master of the free school formerly taught by her husband. After a short trial the boy, then between five and six years of age, was returned to his mother as hopelessly dull and incapable of learning. This was sad news for the poor widow, who, knowing that there was insanity in the family, often wept through fear that her last-born would prove an idiot. And yet redeeming traits were noticed in the child, only nobody knew how to turn them to account. One of his sister's earliest recollections of her brother was that he thirsted for pre-eminence, and that "before he was five years old he would always preside over his playmates as their master, and they his hired servants." Sometimes the ill-comprehended child would sit quietly crying to himself for hours, and no one could tell what for. After a time, however, Mrs. Chatterton discovered that her little boy was not the hopeless dunce she had feared, for "he fell in love," as she styled it, with the illuminated capitals of an old French musical manuscript, and she was enabled, by taking advantage of the momentary fascination, to teach him his alphabet, and thence, by easy stages, to read out of an old black-letter Bible. A characteristic anecdote is related of this period of the child's life, which proves that even at that early stage of his career he was endowed with ambitious aspirations. A relative of | the boy having presented him with a delf basin with a lion upon it, he said he had "rather it had been an angel with a trumpet to blow his name about the world." A strange saying for a child, and one that might have rendered the most thoughtless observant of the boy's behavior. But of course people are not on the lookout for a genius, especially in poor families, where such personages are strangely in the way and unprofitable, and it is not surprising, therefore, that Chatterton's peculiarities only aroused doubts as to his sanity. The miscomprehension and want of sympathy which the poor child felt fostered, if it did not engender, that wonderful secretiveness and self-reliance which so strongly characterized his after-years. The mother's fears about her "ugly duckling" now took another turn: to her joy and surprise he rapidly improved at his studies, so that by "eight years of age he was so eager for books that he read from the moment he waked, which was early, until he went to bed, if allowed." Henceforth Mrs. Chatterton's anxiety was that her son would injure his health by overstudy, for in order to devote his whole time to reading he neglected both food and sleep, and often lost all consciousness of what was transpiring around him, so that when spoken to repeatedly he would start and ask what was being talked about. But for all his eccentricities the boy was frank and companionable, and was very useful at home because of his ingenuity in repairing or manufacturing domestic articles. His mother described him as sharp-tempered, but as quickly appeased, in which respects, apparently, he resembled her. From the earliest childhood he is represented as of a generous, impulsive, acquaintance-making disposition, and when quite young exercised great self-restraint over his appetite in eating and drinking. At times the boy loved to retire with his books to the seclusion of an old garret for the only indulgence he ever seems to have permitted himself, that is to say, deep draughts of literature. In the perusal of books, and in abstracted wanderings about the precincts of the adjacent church of St. Mary Redcliffe, the little fellow passed some neither profitless nor unhappy years. But a change impended. There was a school at Bristol for the free board, clothing, and education of a little leisure left for the indulgence of his solitude-loving mind. But, so far as the scanty records of this portion of the boy's career extend, he appears to have gone through his work creditably, his mother having been informed that he made rapid progress in arithmetic, and his tutors gen COLSTON'S HOSPITAL. 66 He money his mother allowed him he hired books from a circulating library. Shortly before his twelfth year he, like Byron and many other boys of such an age, made a catalogue of the works he had read, to the number of seventy. "History and divinity," says his sister, were the chief subjects." On Saturdays and saints' days leave of absence from the school was granted to the boys from one or two in the afternoon till seven or eight in the evening, according to the season, and Chatterton, like his comrades, would hurry home, but, unlike them, instead of spending his few precious hours in boyish play, would rush up into his little upstairs sanctum to wile away the time in reading. Mrs. Edkins, in her very imaginative recollections of the poet, says that when he was home for the holidays he would lock himself in the little lumberroom he had appropriated as a study, and frequently remain there the whole day without taking any meals. Lamb, and so many brother celebrities | erally speaking well of his behavior. received their education, his might have never neglected any opportunity of readbeen a very different fate. Mrs. Chat-ing, and out of the little sum of pocketterton was, however, doubtless delighted to obtain a presentation to Colston's for her little lad, and Chatterton, who was not quite eight, was much pleased when he heard of his nomination, deeming that he should now be able to quench his thirst for learning at an inexhaustible spring. His hopes were speedily blighted: the monotonous routine and limited character of the studies taught at Colston's were very different to what he had anticipated. "He could not learn so much at school," he said, "as he could at home; they had not enough books." Instead of wanderings amid the flowers of literature, Chatterton found nothing but instruction of the most elementary kind, varied only by catechisms and church services. The discipline was severe, and the rules of the institution as unchangeable as those of the Medes and Persians. In summer the school hours were from seven in the morning till noon, and from one till five in the afternoon; in winter, school did not commence before eight, and was concluded by four. All through the year the pupils had to be in bed by eight, so that when meal-time and the various claims of boarding-school life are considered, it will readily be understood that Chatterton had very As might be well comprehended, Chatterton's school friends were few, but prominent among them were his bedfellow, Baker, who subsequently went to Charleston, South Carolina, and his tutor, Thomas Phillips. He appears to have regarded Phillips as an epitome of manly virtues, no mean figure in the periodical publicaand all those interested in the boy's story tions of the day." Here, doubtless, may will coincide in the wish of his first bi- be discovered Chatterton's first incentive ographer, Dr. Gregory, that a more ex- to versifying. He ever regarded the tended knowledge was possessed of this memory of Phillips with reverential afPhillips. One of the assistant masters at fection, and his feelings at the tutor's Colston's, Phillips is found to have not premature death, although expressed in only had a taste for poesy himself, but artificial language, evince the strength of even to have contrived to inspire many of his attachment for his first, and, one his pupils with similar feelings, several might almost say, last friend. In the of them besides Chatterton having "made"Elegy" he wrote upon Phillips he terms |