compound of ambition and avarice, of the blindness of zealot furor and the wildness of superstitious credulity, on the part of the Spaniards, the sober, calm, self-renouncing spirit which prompted the Puritans of England to seek, for themselves and posterity, on these rude and inhospitable shores, freedom to worship God, and you have the impellent motives of both these classes of adventurers.

The manner in which each sought to accomplish their respective purposes was equally dissimilar. The one relied on craft and force, on wily dissimulation or martial prowess, to make the simple-minded natives their supple coadjutors or menial slaves, in effecting their own purposes of universal domination. The others for the most part, and with some few painful exceptions, seemed disposed from the outset to act on principles of justice, of moderation and good-will towards the aborigines. They purchased of the Indians, for what the latter deemed a satisfactory equivalent, the right of soil, entered into treaties of amity and commerce with their tribes, introduced among them the knowledge if not the practice of the arts; and only after the most provoking experience of their savage treachery, their murderous and diabolical dispositions, did they execute upon them the retribution which their crimes merited. And even here, one cannot but notice the humanity and pious benevolence which drew from Robinson at Leyden the exclamation, on hearing of the first execution of some of the Indians who had plotted the destruction of the infant colony of Plymouth: "Oh, how happy a thing had it been, that you had converted some, before you killed any!" Hence it was that our pilgrim fathers sought not the towns and populous settlements of the natives, but contented themselves with such unoccupied territories as the mutual wars and a recent sweeping pestilence among the Indians had left vacant. A greater difference still, if possible, was observable in the internal arrangements. The Spaniards seem always to have been governed by military leaders; while the New-England adventurers especially-and the same is true, though to a less extent, in the other colonies were self-governed republics even from their inception, where the germs of family, and church, and municipal governments, needed only to be expanded to the larger magnitude of the State, and where each of the former had been a successful apprenticeship for the latter. Hence the aids which the Bible, everywhere diffused, read, interpreted, and applied by each individual for his own government, evidently had contributed to fit the one of these

communities for progress and expansion; and the loss which the other had experienced by the want of these influences.

Nor need many words be used to indicate the immense difference in result between the two experiments. The best illustration here is found in looking on the present condition of the colonies planted by Spain in this Western Hemisphere, and those planted by the Protestant emigrants from the different States of Europe, but chiefly from Great Britain, at a subsequent period. The civilization, the wealth, the maritime enterprise of the former were rather superior, at the outstart, to those of the latter. But the one difference of religion and its correlative accompaniments are adequate to account for the vast disparity of the former, as compared with the latter, in the results realized. The Catholic, refused in the highest interests of his being the exercise of individual judgment, and made to bow obsequiously to the dictation of erring human beings like himself, is in all his training unfitted to become a constituent portion of a free, self-governed republic. The results of various experiments in former ages and in our own times, in both the Old World and the New, have abundantly confirmed what the very nature of the case to every reflecting mind would thus indicate.

These prefatory suggestions, naturally growing out of the comparative view of various portions of American history, may have the farther benefit of enhancing the interest with which the student sits down to an examination of his country's annals. A more thorough and radical exploration of all the elements which have entered into and largely modified our progress hitherto, may well be warranted, since the development is so unique and satisfactory. For this reason, as well as others hereafter to be noticed, the somewhat unusual practice of bringing together the three historical treatises, noted at the head of this article, may be not only tolerated, but approved. For an investigation of such magnitude, we need all the advantage which can be derived from the labors of those occupying different positions, some more and others less remote, and accordingly affected variously by the light in which they viewed the events and characters which they have alike undertaken to delineate. All of these writers seem to have felt the ennobling, inspiriting influence of their common theme; and as they are not rivals, but each has deliberately chosen his own particular province, and each prides himself not unnaturally on the peculiar phase of our history which he has undertaken most fully to exhibit, it may reasonably be expected, that the full results of their

several contributions will be more satisfactory, from the very diversity of the methods by which they have been reached.

James Grahame, the author of the first named history, was a Scotchman, born towards the close of the last century; and under the training of a generous-minded father was early imbued with favor towards the free institutions and flourishing States of our young Republic. A barrister by profession, but a literary student and investigator by cordial preference, as well as early devotement, for nearly twenty years he seems to have made the composition and revision of this history a labor of love and of duty. Undoubtedly his position furnished him some rare facilities of investigation; while at the same time he could not but be subjected to more than counterbalancing infelicities, for which ample allowance should be made. The rich historical treasures to which he enjoyed free access, not only in London, but at Gottingen and Paris, together with a happy exemption from the liability of being unduly influenced by too close contact with persons or parties, with interests or honors which might blind or sway his mind, formed perhaps the chief elements of his advantage; while on the per contra side of the account must be reckoned the want of that intimate acquaintance, which nothing so well as daily familiarity with scenes, events, and institutions he was to portray, can supply. There is another disadvantage under which the mind of our author evidently labored, which it may be more difficult fully to appreciate or adequately explain; but which nevertheless will be obvious to those who most carefully investigate the texture of this history. Mr. Grahame was an eminently religious and conscientious man, cordially attached to the Scottish Presbyterians and Covenanters, (whose peculiarities and excellences he defended against the literary Corypheus of the North, Sir Walter Scott, whose endeavor to hold them up to contempt and ridicule, in his "Tales of my Landlord," might reasonably have provoked a less zealous partisan ;) and he seems not unnaturally to have conceived the highest opinion of the excellence of those religionists in our country, who are most fully assimilated in creed and practice to his favorites. Had he been a resident among us, he could scarcely have failed to modify and correct his somewhat too exalted estimate of those religious leaders who figured so conspicuously in Church and State, in the early days of our colonial history; so as, while on the one hand giving all due praise to their many and sterling excellences, he would, on the other hand, have fairly discriminated, and made ampler allowance for the

misguiding influence of their no less positive imperfections. To this result all candid minds among us seem to have finally been brought ; nor is it to be doubted that our author, if mingling freely with those most favorably circumstanced for reaching a correct result, would have been led to similar conclusions. As a clear, striking, melancholy instance of the perversion thus produced on a mind usually fair and impartial, may be mentioned his treatment of Rhode Island, of its illustrious founder Roger Williams, and of his noble associate and coadjutor John Clark. The attempt to blacken the character of the latter-for having, in the prosecution of his successful endeavor to obtain from King Charles II. the liberal charter of Rhode Island, which Massachusetts, in the spirit of aggression too commonly evinced towards this neighbor in particular, was endeavoring to prevent, given back some of the blows which had so often been levelled at those he represented-has recoiled with a just severity; and we cannot regret that the author of this slanderous "invention " has been made to wince under the infliction of a merited castigation. As to the plentiful repetitions in this history of the now nearly obsolete misrepresentations of Williams,drawn, as we all know they were, only from the statements of the men (his brother ministers in most instances) who were the active procuring cause of his banishment, and who, in accordance with a nearly universal law of our nature, that we rarely forgive one whom we have wantonly injured, seemed impelled to the last to endeavor to blacken his character, that they might justify their abuse of him,-time and a returning sense of justice well nigh universal, make them comparatively harmless. Some of us can well remember how common it was, in the last generation even, for the successors in spirit as well as in name of Cotton and Mather to try to heap all manner of opprobrium on Rhode Island. That a Scotch. sympathizer with their orthodoxy should have sometimes believed these unfounded statements in her dispraise, is less strange than lamentable. It is the very evil of his position which we have above indicated, and cannot fail to deplore. Most happily a different spirit is now generally prevalent among all classes.

We are happy to see that Mr. Grahame has learned to dis

* The North American Review for October last thus sums up the truthful verdict: "The virtues of the Puritan settlers of New-England were, indomitable courage, patience, fortitude, self-denial, generosity, extreme purity of morals, piety, energy, and singleness of purpose almost superhuman,-virtues many and colossal. Their vices, few but formidable, were intolerance, cruelty, tyranny, and bigotry."

criminate between the more tolerant disposition of the Plymouth Colony, and the rancorous persecutions so fiercely carried on and so long continued by Massachusetts. He notices one of the reasons of this difference. But there are three obvious reasons, which on some future opportunity we may take occasion to develop more fully, because they do not as yet seem to have secured the consideration which they deserve. In the first place, there were, as Mr. Bancroft has explained, two classes of Puritans who emigrated to this country: the thorough, practical nonconformists, sometimes called Brownists; and the timid, irresolute, half-hearted, who, up to the period of their leaving England, had lived in full communion with the Established Church, many of whose practices were unwelcome to them. The former endured severe persecutions in England, of which the latter had no experience. For this reason they might naturally be expected to be more tolerant, who remembered the smart of their own scourgings. Then, in the second place-as noticed by the author now under consideration-these persecuted and real nonconformists had fled to Holland, and enjoyed "the advantage of an intermediate residence in a land where a peaceful co-existence of different sects was demonstrated to be not merely practicable, but signally promotive of the most excellent graces of Christian character." Then, in the third place, it deserves notice that a very different position was held by the Plymouth settlers,-coming to this country without any charter from the King, and dependent, like a Scriptural church organization, on the voluntary assent of the parties for that constitution, or compact of self-government, under which they lived, from that of their neighbors of Massachusetts Bay, who assumed to rule by a divine right, derived in due and regular succession from their monarch's grant. All three of these elements combined, as the result shows, to make the colony at Plymouth far more tolerant than its more lordly and very soon overshadowing and patronizing neighbor. Indeed, until "the Bay" had infused the bad leaven of an intermeddling and persecuting spirit into the counsels of her older but weaker sister, there was no evidence of its existence in the latter.

One cannot but regret that in this history, as in many others of high pretensions, there is an utter failure to discriminate between the partial toleration attempted with some few interruptions by the colony of Maryland, and the untarnished manifestation of soul-liberty first illustrated, in modern times at least, in the government of Rhode Island. In the attempt to