New England society in tje city of Mew '
annual report. [39th] 1844.

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"ISIMEN 'Ely 'A eHNA2 .

ADDRESS

DELIVERED BEFORE THE

NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY

CITY OF, NEW-YORK,
E%g|K MEER 24, 18 4 4,

BY GEORGE P. MARSH.

PUBLISHED BY REQUEST OF THE SOCIETY.

NEW YORK:
M. W DODD, PUBLISHER AND BOOKSELLER,
BRICK CHURCH C II A P E L ,
Opposite the City Hall.
1845.

"ISIMEN 'EIS 'ABHNA2.

ADDRESS,

DELIVERED BEFORE THE

NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY

CITY OF NEW-YORK,
DECEMBER 24, 1844,
BY GEORGE P. MARSH.
PUBLISHED BY REQUEST OF THE SOCIETY.

NEW YORK:
M. W. DODD, PUBLISHER AND BOOKSELLER,
BRICK CHURCH CHAPEL,
Opposite the City Hall.
1845.

New- York, December 24th, 1844.
Hon. George P. Marsh :
Sir, — In behalf of the New-England Society in the City
of New- York, and in pursuance of the resolution, adopted by
acclamation of the assembly which heard you, we thank
you for the thoughtful, pure, and very learned and eloquent
Address delivered by you before the Society, at the Taber
nacle in this City, on occasion of the recent Anniversary of
the Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, and earnestly
request a copy of the Address for publication.
We are, very truly,
Your friends and servants,
THOMAS FESSENDEN.
HARVEY P. PEET.
JOHN A. UNDERWOOD.
A. G. HAZARD.

New-York, December 24th, 1844.
Gentlemen :
In compliance with the request of the New-England
Society of the City of New-York, expressed by your note of
this morning, I transmit, herewith, a copy of the Address
referred to, for publication.
I am, Gentlemen, Very respectfully yours, GEORGE P. MARSH.
To Messrs. T. FESSENDEN.
H. P. PEET.
J. A. UNDERWOOD.
A. G. HAZARD. Committee, &c.

ADDRESS.

While New-England was yet united to our parent land,
by ties of colonial dependence and golden links of filial affec
tion, which the harsh alchemy of trans-atlantic oppression
was fast transmuting to fetters of iron, our fathers were wont
to speak of a voyage to England as a visit to their home.
The mother country, unnatural as she had proved, was still
regarded as the proper home even of those of her children,
whom the unsparing rancour of priestly tyranny and religious
hate had forced to seek a new abode in an unknown wilder
ness, and to exchange the domestic cruelties of the parent,
for the hospitalities of the stranger and the tender mercies of
the savage.
But the outcast colony has become herself a metropolis,
and in turn sent forth swarms, whom no political severance,
no memory of unmaternal wrongs, yet forbids to call her,
Mother. To her scattered and undegenerate sons, New
England is still the patriarchal tabernacle, and on this day,
when the hearts of all her children are turned to that mag
netic rock, I am here to invite you to re-visit your primeval
home. Let us, then, on this her natal day, renew our hom-

age to our venerable mother, kindle anew the fires of our
patriotism by recurring to the memories of her youth, and
animate and refresh our spirits by reverently listening to the
counsels of her maturer age.
The home to which I invite you is not our material birth
place, nor shall I aim to touch your sympathies, by picturing
to your fancy the scenes of your childhood, the sea, the
mountain, the plain, or the river, which frowned or smiled
on the mansions of your fathers, or the cottages of your
widowed mothers, by reminding you of the elm that bent
over your cradle, and the pines that sighed by the graves of
your kindred, or by describing our aguish climate, with its
alternations of chill and fever, where the fervid heat of a
brief and fitful summer serves but to make more sensible the
cold of a long and rigorous winter. Neither will I dwell on
the institutions of our native land, the district free school, the
humble church and its simple worship, the silence of the un
broken Sabbath, the free election, the equal rights and equal
level of all her people ; for these, even more than the local
features, the soil and the climate, the hill and the valley,
the streamlet and the ocean, characterize the material being
of New England ; but it is to the fundamental principles on
which these institutions rest, and the inbred traits of charac
ter which mark us as a people, that I shall call your atten
tion, and, so far as the brief hour, to which I am limited by
the proprieties of the occasion, will permit, I shall develop
those principles, and refer those characteristic traits to the
external influences, which have implanted or strengthened
them. But I may well invite to accompany us, on this Thanks-

giving visit, not the descendants of the Pilgrims alone, but
all who share their principles, and especially those brothers
of the same blood, twin scions of the ancient Gothic stock,
with whom you are now domiciliated, and whose ancestors,
after having themselves nobly fought and triumphed in the
same glorious struggle against the crown and the mitre, re
ceived and cheered with kindly sympathies your exiled fore
fathers, as they rested on their way, to gather strength for
the long and hazardous pilgrimage that lay before them.
Nor do I address myself alone to the Christian philosopher,
who knows that the integrity of his religion depends upon
the cardinal doctrine of the Puritan faith, the recognition of
both the authority and the sufficiency of the revealed and
unsophisticated word of God ; to the statesman, who is able
to perceive the indissoluble connection between his country's
weal and her adherence to those principles of civil and eccle
siastical polity which New Testament Christianity sanctions ;
to the merchant-prince, who is conscious that he owes to
Puritan impulses those enterprising energies, of which his
well-earned gains are the just and appropriate reward ; to
him who boasts a nobler genealogy than that of a Howard,
because he bears a name that is subscribed to the covenant
sealed in the Mayflower's cabin ; but also to the humble and
hopeful youth, who, having been bred in penury and igno
rance, can hope to be emancipated from those shackles, only
by the favor of such institutions as our ancestors have found
ed, and who cherishes that decent pride, which impels him
to rely on his own energies, to despise the vanity of birth,
and to thank God, that the current of his veins is tainted by
no drop of royal or of noble blood.

10
In discussing the only subject appropriate to the occasion,
it is not my aim to pamper or excite a feeling of sectional
and disdainful pride, in the descendants of those to whom the
cause of civil and religious liberty is so deeply indebted, but
to awaken in you a conviction, that your virtues and your
liberties can be maintained inviolate, only by a steady adhe
rence to the grounds upon which they are founded, and in
these days of evil omen, when the principles of your fathers
are every where spoken against, and the fierce strifes of con
tending factions, and the lust of temporal and ecclesiastical
dominion, are threatening to rend the very framework of our
social fabric, to rouse to action some of those heroic spirits,
whose glory it is to deserve well of their country, by hoping,
when other good men see cause only of despair.
There is a theory which teaches, both as a fact of observa
tion, and as an universal law of nature, that all things into
whose constitution material substance enters, whether they
be animate or inanimate, organized or inorganic, individual
or aggregate, have their necessary periods of inception,
growth, maturity and decay. This general law, in its ap
plication to organic, or at least to animal life, seems to be
necessary, and death is implied in the very idea of animated
being ; but with regard to inorganic things, though inexora
ble, it is but accidental. In the inorganic creation, origin,
change and dissolution alike are brought about by the
agency of external material causes, working in conjunction
with the laws of spontaneous chemical action. Gravity, at
traction and other mechanical forces bring into juxtaposition
substances indued with various affinities, and the chemistry
of inanimate nature combines them into forms, which, pre-

11
served against all forces but the particular attractions and co
hesions by which they are built up, would continue without
aliment or change, increase or diminution, and be as perma
nent as the immutable laws, which give them being. A
stone or a metal, protected against the action of air, heat,
moisture, and external mechanical forces, would be as dura
ble as time itself. But such protection is impossible, for na
ture insulates nothing, and suffers none of her works to be
permanently withdrawn from the sphere of any of her in
fluences. The solid rock is rent by the earthquake, shivered
by frost, and wasted by the dropping rain ; the hard metal
is oxydised by the invisible moisture suspended in the clear
atmosphere, and both are reduced from masses to fragments,
from fragments to particles, and at last, perhaps, resolved
into imperceptible gases. Beings possessed of organic life,
on the other hand, though requiring the voluntary or fortui
tous concurrence of external causes for birth, dependent on
them for aliment and growth, and exposed to premature de
struction or decay from their action, do nevertheless truly
owe their conception, maturity and perfection, to an internal
and superior vital law, not a mere dead force of affinity, at
traction and repulsion, but a law of germination, develop
ment, assimilation and progress. But, unlike the chemical
law, which tends to preserve the inorganic forms constructed
by its energies, this law of life pronounces judgement of
death on its offspring, and becomes the executioner of its
own inevitable sentence. Organic life requires aliment and
continued assimilation. For lack of aliment it perishes, but
the food that supplies its nutrient juices brings with it the
seeds of death. The very vital processes tend, in their con-

12
tinued action, to the destruction of the fabric they have rear
ed. The constructive powers, which build up our material
frames, acting in strict accordance with their own law, even
under circumstances most favorable to the permanence of
their works, by new elaboration, secretion and assimilation,
clog up the ducts and cells, ossify the valves, make rigid the
joints and flexures, and end by stopping and surrendering to
the influence of the chemical forces, whose action organic
life had suspended, or rather controlled, the machine them
selves had created. Death from natural decay is the conse
quence, not of the exhaustion of the vital powers, but of
their continued action, for life, even as a destroyer, is always
constructive. Thus the vital principle is itself suicidal.
From conception to maturity, it is creative ; but that point
once passed, the Genius of Life inverts his torch, and be
comes the Angel of Death. Saturn devours his children,
and the various energies, to which animate forms owe their
material being, work on, until, by conflicting action, they
neutralize each other, and destroy their product.
According to the dark forebodings of this awful theory,
even the great globe itself is subject to this sameuniversal law,
and has its periods of mutation and catastrophe, all tending
to prepare it for final dissolution. Nay, its very occupancy
by organized beings renders it incapable of permanent en
joyment, by successive generations of similar or allied orders
of existences. Every breath forever unfits for respiration a
portion ofthe circumambient atmosphere, and the equilibrium
of its constituent gases is perpetually disturbed by vegetable
exhalation. Every particle of matter, that has once entered
into the constitution, or served the uses of a living being

13
becomes thereby less suitable for future organic combination.
The return to earth's bosom of the mouldering form of each
of her children irrecoverably taints a portion of her soil with
a poison destructive to similar organic life. The action of
sun and wind, frost and rain, is degrading continents, and
the explosive power of volcanic forces is upheaving the bot
tom of oceans. Thus the relative proportions of land and
water are deranged, terrestrial climates become too hot, too
cold, too moist or too dry, for the present tribes of organized
nature, and earth is continually growing unfit for the habita
tion of the living beings that animate her surface. All these,
then, shall perish, — the flowers of the mead, the grasses of
the plain, the leafy giants of the forest, the creeping worm
and the buzzing fly, the inhabitant of the waters, the fowl of
the air, the beast of the field, man himself, who lords it over
all, — and Earth is desolate. But she shall be re-peopled,
again and again, by new creations of living beings, with
forms, organs, and faculties suited to a new atmosphere,
and a new configuration and consistence of surface. Thus
change shall succeed change, until the combined action of
vital and inorganic chemistry shall bring into conflict suGh
mighty hostile energies, that earth's solid frame shall sink in
the collision, the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the
rocks become fluid, the waters evaporate, the heavens, the
atmosphere, the subtle medium of light, shall pass away
like a scroll, and the place now filled by this gladsome, busy
world of life and energy and light, shall be a motionless,
dark, and noiseless void.
It is said, too, that man, in his social capacity, is subject
to a similar law. The life of an individual is an epitome of

14
the history of a state. A nation first struggles into exist
ence, as a colony or dependent province : then, fostered by
care, or more probably favored by neglect, it gradually ac
quires strength, maturity, independence and power : then,
after a few generations or centuries of glory and greatness,
enervated by luxury, weakened by private and official cor
ruption, and divided by faction, it falls an easy prey to do
mestic usurpation or foreign aggression, is impoverished by
tyranny, or plundered by conquest, and, by incorporation or
partition, loses its political individuality, and has no longer
a place in the catalogue of independent sovereignties.
That such has been the general fate of empire, history
abundantly shows. The glories of Grecian civilization,
where the human intellect achieved its highest and most
diversified triumphs, have been succeeded by the barbaric
pride of the sensual Turk, and the iron sway of heartless
Rome, by the spiritual despotism of the unreasoning monk.
The mephitic breath of Ahriman has quenched the eternal
fires of old Persepolis, and the Simoom has blasted the flow
ery splendor of imperial Bagdad. Typhon's cloud broods
over Thebes and Memphis. The history of Egypt is studied
in her sepulchres, and the Etruscan races of primeval Italy
are only known by the gorgeous furniture of their funerals.
It is a question of grave and even fearful import, whether
there is, in the constitution of modern civil society, any con
servative element, which promises permanent duration to
existing forms of social organization, any prophylactic against
the corruptions of war and the cankers of peace, any mithri-
date against the insinuating and seductive poison of alien
and anti-national influences, any corrective for that love of

15
novelty and change, which leads men so readily to abandon
the old and well approved truth, and its fruit, the venerable
civil or religious institution, for the plausible, but uncertain
theory, and the specious and hollow show of reform in church
or state ; or whether, on the other hand, it is the inexorable
decree of the Creator, that nations, as well as individuals,
shall have their ages of infancy and growth, their moment
of full maturity, and their period of sudden convulsion,
chronic disease and decline, or senile decay.
May we hope to find, in the invention of printing, the
progress of science and the mechanic arts, the more intimate
relations of international commerce and government, the
extension of the principle of associate action, combined with
equality of individual powers and duties, the increased re
spect for the rights of man, and their more general recogni
tion by hereditary rulers, the growing reverence for law, and
the consequent repugnance to war — the negation of all law,
the wider diffusion of scientific, political and religious know
ledge, or the dissemination of sounder views of Christianity,
any barrier against the possible encroachments of unchristi-
anized barbarism, the love of conquest and spoil among the
powers of Christendom, and the internal corruptions, which
lead to dissension, rebellion, and revolution ; or are we
bound to believe, that the fortunes of the future will be but
a repetition of the history of the past, that the Christian
world will again and again be seared with fire and drenched
in blood, that it will still be a theatre, whose shifting scenes
shall exhibit perpetual change, the alternate supremacy of
might and right, now force and arbitrary will victorious over
law and reason, now the brief triumph of virtue over pas-

16
sion, resistance to lawful authority on the one hand, on the
other, usurpation and contempt of human rights 1 Are law
and anarchy, tyranny and freedom, like the good and evil
principles of the Manicheean system, to wage perpetual
war, or shall the reason of state at length achieve a final
victory over the rebellious passions of social man 1
These great questions, indeed, admit of no prospective so
lution, and it would be but an idle speculation to attempt to
raise the veil with which an inscrutable Providence conceals
the distant future, or even to seek to resolve the narrower
problem, whether, as some wise men have believed, our par
ticular Anglo-Saxon civilization is nearing its zenith, and, at
some not distant epoch of the earth's great year, destined to
give place to other forms of social life. But there are ques
tions, concerning the present hopes and probable fate of
those institutions in which we of New England have been
nurtured, that demand our attention, because they involve
matters of conscientious duty and immediate interest.
In order well and wisely to discharge the duty which
every free man owes to the land of his birth, it is indispen
sable that he know the true nature of her institutions, and
comprehend how they have been shaped and modified by the
predominant traits of national character : for free govern
ments are never the result of accident, but always derive
their original from the intelligent exercise of the national
will, and, in their structure, conform to the genius of the
people. Upon every homogeneous nation, Providence impresses
distinctive moral and intellectual traits, through the agency
of natural causes, and of these, the influence of climate,

17
soil, and the configuration of the earth's surface, is the most
active and conspicuous. — To such influences, the great race,
from which we are remotely derived, owes its most striking
characteristics, and the same traits, though modified by the
enjoyment of Albion's milder sky and more genial soil, for
a period of ten centuries, were roused into distinct promi
nence in our immediate ancestors, by moral causes, and have
recovered their original sharpness and consistence in us, their
descendants, by our transfer to a harsher climate, a ruder
landscape, and a more unthankful glebe.
What, then, are the fundamental traits of our hereditary
character, and how have they been formed by the action of
the influences around us ? The word home, which I have
so often used, and which is peculiar to our ancient tongue
and its cognate dialects, suggests the most pregnant traits in
the character of the ancestry from whom we sprang, and
these traits, with their progeny of social virtues and intellec
tual excellences, are more unequivocally traceable than al
most any other to the influence of climate. Both the word
and the feelings which are clustered around it, in their
strength and their tenderness, are the very " badge of our
tribe," and it is well that a wise Providence has compensat
ed, by a daring and restless spirit of enterprise, an impulse,
whose excess might detract from the energy, which the ne
cessity of a never-ending struggle with the elements imperi
ously requires in the sons of the frigid and frugal North.
In the sunny climes of Southern Europe, where a sultry
and relaxing day is followed by a balmy and refreshing
night, and but a brief period intervenes between the fruits of
Autumn and the renewed promises of Spring, life, both social

18
and industrial, is chiefly passed beneath the open canopy of
heaven. The brightest hours of the livelong day are dragged
in drowsy, listless toil, or indolent repose ; but the evening
breeze invigorates the fainting frame, rouses the flagging
spirit, and calls to dance and revelry, and song, beneath a
brilliant moon or a starlit sky. No necessity exists for those
household comforts, which are indispensable to the inhab
itant of colder zones, and the charms of domestic life are
scarcely known in their perfect growth. But in the frozen
North, for a large portion of the year, the pale and feeble rays
of a clouded sun but partially dispel, for a few short hours,
the chills and shades of a lingering dawn, and an early
and tedious night. Snows impede the closing labors of har
vest, and stiffening frosts aggravate the fatigues of the way
farer, and the toils of the forest. Repose, society and occu
pation alike, must, therefore, be sought at the domestic
hearth. Secure from the tempest that howls without, the
father and the brother here rest from their weary tasks ; here
the family circle is gathered around the evening meal, and
lighter labor, cheered, not interrupted, by social intercourse,
is resumed, and often protracted, till, like the student's vigils,
it almost " outwatch the Bear." Here the child grows up
under the ever watchful eye of the parent, in the first and
best of schools, where lisping infancy is taught the rudiments
of sacred and profane knowledge, and the older pupil is en
couraged to con over by the evening taper, the lessons of the
day, and seek from the father or a more advanced brother, a
solution of the problems, which juvenile industry has found
too hard to master. The members of the domestic circle are
thus brought into closer contact ; parental authority assumes

19
the gentler form of persuasive influence, and filial submis
sion is elevated to affectionate and respectful observance.
The necessity of mutual aid and forbearance, and the per
petual interchange of good offices, generate the tenderest
kindliness of feeling, and a lasting warmth of attachment to
home and its inmates, throughout the patriarchal circle.
Among the most important fruits of this domesticity of life,
are the better appreciation of the worth of the female char
acter, woman's higher rank as an object, not of passion,
but of reverence, and the reciprocal moral influence which
the two sexes exercise over each other. They are brought
into close communion, under circumstances most favorable
to preserve the purity of woman, and the decorum of man,
and the character of each is modified, and its excesses re
strained, by the example of the other. Man's rude energies
are softened into something of the ready sympathy and dex
terous helpfulness of woman, and woman, as she learns to
prize and to reverence the independence, the heroic firmness,
the patriotism of man, acquires and appropriates some tinge
of his peculiar virtues. Such were the influences which
formed the heart of the brave, good daughter of apostolic
John Knox, who bearded that truculent pedant, James I.,
and told him she would rather receive her husband's head in
her lap, as it fell from the headsman's axe, than to consent
that he should purchase his life by apostasy from the religion
he had preached, and the God he had worshipped. To the
same noble school belonged that goodly company of the
Mothers of New England, who shrank neither from the
dangers of the tempestuous sea, nor the hardships and sor
rows of that first awful winter, but were ever at man's side,

20
encouraging, aiding, consoling, in every peril, every trial,
every grief. Had that grand and heroic exodus, like the
mere commercial enterprises to which most colonies owe
their foundation, been unaccompanied by woman, at its first
outgoing, it had, without a visible miracle, assuredly failed,
and the world had wanted its fairest example of the Christian
virtues, its most unequivocal tokens, that the Providence,
which kindled the pillar of fire to lead the wandering steps
of its people, yet has its chosen tribes, to whom it vouchsafes
its wisest guidance and its choicest blessings. Other com
munities, nations, races, may glory in the exploits of their
fathers ; but it has been reserved to us of New-England to
know and to boast, that Providence has made the virtues of
our mothers a yet more indispensable condition, and certain
ground, both of our past prosperity and our future hope.
The strength of the domestic feeling engendered by the
influences which I have described, and the truer and more
intelligent mutual regard between the sexes, which is attri
butable to the same causes, are the principal reasons why
those monastic institutions, which strike at the very root of
the social fabric, and are eminently hostile to the practice of
the noblest and loveliest public and private virtues, have
met with less success, and numbered fewer votaries in North
ern than in Southern Christendom. The celibacy of the
clergy was last adopted, and first abandoned, in the North ;
the follies of the stylites, the lonely hermitages of the The-
baid, the silence of La Trappe, the vows, which, seeming to
renounce the pleasures of the world, do but abjure its better
sympathies, and in fine, all the selfish austerities of that
corrupted Christianity, which grossly seeks to compound by

21
a mortified body for an unsubdued heart, originated in cli
mates unfavorable to the growth and exercise of the house
hold virtues.
The composure and concentration of domestic life are pe
culiarly propitious to intellectual occupation, to habits of pa
tient mental labor, and to spiritual contemplation ; and all
these tendencies are strengthened, and the mind is predis
posed to serious thought, by the mournful silence of the
woods, the imprisonment of the lively current of the streams,
the retreat of many tribes of animated being, the solitude of
a sparse population, and the want of novelty and incident,
which characterizes the wintry repose of nature in most cold
climates. These hereditary propensities our ancestors shared in
common with all the descendants of the Gothic stock. The
circumstances of their emigration would naturally incline
them to theological speculation, and in the want of means
for more varied mental culture, they could scarcely seek else
where food for a meditative spirit, than in the one book,
which was found beneath the roof of the humblest cabin,
and which they held to contain all useful moral precepts for
this life, all needful guidance for that which is to come.
It was long ago said, that the most efficient mental train
ing is the thorough and long continued study of some one
production of a master mind, and it has become proverbial,
that the most irresistible of intellectual gladiators is the man
of one book, he that wields but a single weapon. If such
be the effect of appropriating, and as it were, assimilating
and making connatural with ourselves, the fruits of a fellow
creature's mental efforts, what may we not expect from the

22
study and comprehension of that book, which is a revelation,
nay, a reflection, of the mind of our Maker 1 What can
withstand a champion, who wields a naked faulchion drawn
from the armory of the most High 1 With our Puritan an
cestors, the Bible was the text-book of parental instruction ;
it was regarded with fond and reverent partiality, as the
choicest classic of the school, it was the companion of the
closet, the pillow of the lonely wayfarer, the only guide to
happiness beyond the tomb. Of all Christian sects, the Pu
ritans were most profoundly versed in the sacred volume ; of
all men they have best exemplified the spirit of its doctrines ;
of all religious communities, they have most abundantly en
joyed those blessings, wherewith God has promised to crown
his earthly church.*
It is to early familiarity with the Bible, to its persevering
study, and its daily use, that we must chiefly ascribe the
great intellectual power of the English Puritans of the sev
enteenth century, and the remarkable metaphysical talent of
many of their American descendants. Intellectual philoso
phy, the knowledge of the spiritual in man, is literally, as
well as figuratively, a divine science. It can be successfully
pursued, only where the divine word, undistorted by any
gloss of human authority, may be both freely read and
openly discussed, and where the relations of man to God
and all other divine things are subject to investigation,

* Both here and elsewhere in this discourse, I use the word Puritan, in
its proper and catholic acceptation, as embracing all those sects, which hold,
that tlie Bible is the only rule of Christian faith and practice, and reject the
authority of tradition in rites, doctrine, and church government.

23
checked by no fear of legal restraints, the condemnation of
councils, or the anathema of the priest. Where the doctrine
of overruling human jurisdiction in matters of faith is re
ceived, there may be scholastic subtlety indeed, but no met
aphysical acuteness or depth. The tone and character of
abstract speculation are always influenced by the subjects
with which it is conversant, and the mind, which, through
fear of trenching on forbidden ground, is forced to exert its
busy energies on airy trifles, or questions of impossible solu
tion, will soon become as frivolous, or as incapable of deter
mination, as the puzzles it idly unriddles, or the problems it
vainly seeks to resolve. All higher philosophy is essentially
religious, and its fearless, yet reverent study, as a science
implied, if not revealed in the Scriptures, is
" Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose,"
but it is the fittest preparation, both for achieving and appre
ciating the highest triumphs of human genius, whether in
the sublimest flights of poesy, or the glorious creations of
plastic and pictorial art.
It has beenfalsely charged upon Puritanism, that it is hostile
to taste, to refinement, and to art ; and this because its equal
polity, its simple rites and its humble temples, adorned with
no pomp of sculptured imagery, no warm creations of the vo
luptuous pencil, minister not to the ambitious passions of those
who serve at the altar, or of those who " only stand and
wait," and because it finds the loftiest poetry, the most glow
ing eloquence, the most terrible sublimity, the tenderest pathos,
and the most ravishing beauty, in the visions of the Psalmist

24
and the Prophets, the promises and menaces of the old and
new covenant, the life and passion of the Saviour, the gos
pel delineations of the happiness of the blessed, and prefers
such lessons to the vapid and tricksy eloquence of the
Fathers, such teachings to the shallow homileties of certain
British theologians, who aim to unlearn their neophyte how
to think, that they may then securely dictate what he shall
believe. Nay we are even told that pure Christianity itself
is unpropitious to the arts, and that they can attain their
most perfect development, only as auxiliaries to idolatry and
superstition, as if there were a necessary connection between
the false in religion and the true in art. But if it be asked,
what human spirit has been most keenly alive to feel, and
most abundantly endowed with the creative power to realize,
in living and imperishable forms, all that is lovely or terrible
in nature, all that is grand or beautiful in art, all that is
noble or refined in feeling, all that is glorious in humanity,
and all that is sublime in religion, all men unhesitatingly
answer, the soul of John Milton, the Christian and the Pu
ritan. The source whence Milton drew his inspiration was
the Sacred Book. Without a thorough familiarity with that
volume, such poetry and such prose as that of Milton can
neither be produced, nor comprehended, for the knowledge
of the Bible is not merely suggestive of the loftiest concep
tions, but, in awakening the mind to the idea of the infinite,
it confers the power of originating as well as of appreciating
them. But I have not yet fully developed the influence of climate
upon the character of our fathers. Man is affected by this
influence, as well in his social as in his domestic relations.

25
The sparse population of cold climates, obliges their inhab
itants to restrict their social enjoyments to a smaller circle,
while their relations, at the same time, are extended over a
wider space. Social intercourse is at all times difficult, often
impossible, and it is valued the more, because it is com
paratively rare, and inconvenient of attainment. The soli
tary cottager, widely separated from even his nearest neigh
bor, hemmed in by snow-drifts, or imprisoned by floods,
must, on many occasions of trial, dispense with aid, which
none is at hand to lend, and be content with no wider sym
pathies than those of his own household.
He thus contracts a feeling of independence and self-reli
ance on the dexterity, strength, and fortitude, which have
borne him unaided and unscathed through many a peril, and
at the same time, when occasion offers, he is all the readier
to yield to others the succour, which experience has taught
him how hard it is to miss, and to exercise the hospitality,
for whose refreshing kindness he has often vainly longed.
The same feeling of generous independence is moreover
fostered and strengthened by the necessity of waging a per
petual war with a sterile soil and an angry sky. Being al
ways victorious in this strife, if he relax not his efforts, and
depending neither upon the caprice nor the unequal justice
of man, the hardy husbandman acquires the confidence of
certain success, and spurred by the sting of necessity, and
cheered by the sure hope, that the patient toil of earing will
be rewarded by the joyous labors of harvest, he contracts a
fixed habit of untiring industry, and realizes that fine senti
ment which Plutarch ascribes to Coriolanus, that it is not for
the victor to tire of the battle. And if sometimes, in this
3

26
unequal combat with the elements, he win but a doubtful
triumph, his spirit is not broken, nor are his energies crush
ed, for he accepts his temporary check as a dispensation of
the Providence of God, or the result of some inflexible, but
rarely enforced law of nature, and the humility, which flows
from the consciousness of his impotence to contend with such
influences, detracts no whit from his self-respect as a man,
or his independence in his relations with his fellows.
It is obvious, that a character so constituted is peculiarly
adapted to the reception of the teachings of the Reformation,
and in fact, with few exceptions, those doctrines were most
readily adopted by the tribes most exposed to the influences
I have described, and the cognate families, which had not
been long enough separated from the parent stem, to lose its
predominant traits. In these races, the preachers of the Re
formation found prepared hearts. In the thinly peopled
regions of the cold and sterile North, where churches and
ministers of religion were but sparingly distributed, men had
already learned, that no temple is more sacred than the do
mestic altar, and that under roofs unconsecrated by candle,
book or bell, prayer may be acceptably offered, though sanc
tioned by the presence of no priest decked in the borrowed
trappings of old idolatries, and they who were wont to re
cognize the voice of God, in the dusky terrors of the wintry
tempest, the bellowings of the troubled ocean, the avalanche,
the torrent, the thunder re-echoing from the flanks of the
mountain, required not to be told, that there needs no anoint
ed interpreter between Earth's children and their Heavenly
Father. Such are the constant and abiding influences which act

27
upon our character, and so long as the great features of na
ture are unchanged, so long as the same mountains and
plains and stormy shores shall be exposed to the same fierce
extremes of cold and heat, so long .will the character of
New-England be conspicuous for the traits which now dis
tinguish it.
But besides these permanent and unchanging influences,
there were temporary but harmonious causes in action,
which gave a peculiar, and it may be hoped an indelible,
stamp to the mind which we have inherited from our imme
diate ancestors. We are accustomed to speak of the present,
as emphatically an age of excitement, and the last half cen
tury has indeed been fruitful of great events, pregnant with
uneasy expectation, that have alternately paralyzed with
fear, and intoxicated with hope, the mind of the Christian
world. Humanity has taken a long stride. The principles
of government have been every where discussed, and its
forms here modified, and there totally revolutionized. Dy
nasties have been overthrown and restored, sometimes under
most appalling circumstances of bloodshed, violence and
crime, sometimes with scarcely the loss of a life, or even an
hour's disturbance of the public peace. War has been
waged on a scale of efficiency, compared with which all
former military operations are but the games of children.
Languages, whose very alphabet had been forgotten a thou
sand years, have been taught again to speak, and the learn
ing of the Egyptians, like their mummies, has been exhumed
from their catacombs. The natural sciences and their prac
tical application to the arts of material life, have made as
tounding progress. The means of locomotion have been

28
multiplied and improved, even beyond the tardy dreams of
our lagging imagination. The Bible, which some would
now deny even to your children, has been translated into a
hundred barbarous tongues, and the gospel preached to a
thousand heathen tribes. The far stretched arm of commer
cial enterprise has unlocked the treasures of remotest Ind to
European cupidity, and even decrepit, immutable, impene
trable China has been opened by the sword's point, her gov
ernment forced to recognize political relations with the Chris
tian world, and her three hundred millions of human souls,
that have slept uncounted centuries, are roused to the stimu
lating influences of European lessons and European example.
But a moderate knowledge of history will suffice to teach
us, that all these influences are tame, in comparison with
those which acted on the genius of the sixteenth century,
and the intellectual, and even material action of our own
time, except so far as the latter depends upon machinery, is
lethargic, when contrasted with the life and energy of that
most memorable age.
The art of printing, then just invented, perfected and dif
fused, was dispelling the mists and obscurity of long ages of
Cimmerian darkness, which the tapers, whose feeble rays
paled in the effulgence of this rising sun, had vainly striven
to penetrate and illumine. While the whole learning and
history of the past were thus unfolded, and the ethereal
splendor of Grecian genius, and the borrowed lustre of Ro
man lore, were revealed to the dazzled eye of man, he was
startled by strange rumors, that the conquerors of the Spanish
Moors had tamed wild ocean, and re-discovered, beyond the
illimitable western sea, the long lost realm of old Cathay,

29
and that the celestial Southern Cross, prophetically imagined
by the gifted Italian seer,* had at length gilded the prow of
the Portuguese pilot, whose rival enterprise had passed the
flaming bounds, that ancient error raised between the Arctic
and Antarctic worlds, weathered the Cape of Storms, and
found a new and easy path to spicy Taprobane and golden
Ophir. Man now first knew the bounds of his empire, and was
summoned to take solemn possession of that vast patrimony,
which the superstition of the times declared to be the rightful
heritage of the Catholic Christian, unlawfully withheld from
him by Paynim intruders. Every day revealed new dis
coveries, and inspired new dreams. The East and the West
disclosed stores of wealth, surpassing the visions of the wildest
avarice, and promised the most splendid prizes to chivalry,
errant in a new field, where conquest and rapine were en
nobled, if not sanctified, by the enthusiasm of a fanatic zeal
for the dissemination of the Christian faith, and the lust of
gold was masked even to its votaries, by a- show of concern
for the souls of those they plundered. The conquerors op
pressed, robbed, murdered, not helpless and timid savages,
but malignant infidels, and it was but a lawful spoiling of the

* Io mi volsi a man destra, e posi mente
A 1' altro polo : e vidi quattro stelle
Non viste mai fuor ch' alia prima gente.
Goder parea ' 1 ciel di lor fiammelle.
Oh settentrional vedovo sito,
Poi che privato sei di mirar quelle ! Purgatorio, Canto I.

30
Egyptians, if they appropriated to themselves their jewels
of gold and their ingots of silver.
The gigantic atrocities of Cortes, and the yet more mi
raculous and equally criminal exploits of the terrible Al
buquerque, were therefore not merely excused, but regarded
with reverent admiration, as true expressions of the spirit of
Christian chivalry. Noble and generous men might, with
out impeachment of sordid avarice or wanton cruelty, en
gage in these far off expeditions of predatory discovery, and
a new channel was opened for the spirit of heroic enterprise,
which had previously found in feudal war its sole dark
" path to power and praise."
The invention of gunpowder, though older perhaps by
centuries, had hitherto scarcely affected the character of
European warfare. But the huge and unwieldy bombard
had now given place to the cui verin and saker, and the
matchlock, pregnant, perhaps, with the fate of a king,
gleamed from every the humblest shoulder. The roar of
the cannon drowned the inspiriting clang of the buckler,
and impenetrable smoke obscured the display of personal
prowess. The soldier could no longer rely on his physical
strength, his undismayed courage, his painfully earned dex
terity in the management of his horse and his weapons, for
safety or renown. Till now, the knight, secure in his iron
fortress, could be vanquished only by a " foeman worthy of
his steel" ; but no skill in fence could parry the invisible
bullet, that, speeding on the very wings of death, pierced
the stout corselet, from which the quarrel rebounded. Gun
powder had brought Orlando to the level of the meanest
varlet, and a Bayard or a Sidney might fall by the random

31
shot of a craven boor. Soldiers began to act in masses, and
in blind obedience to the will of their leader, they moved
through clouds of sulphurous smoke, they knew not why or
whither. Those humble qualities, unquestioning obedience
and passive courage, which now became the first of military
virtues, were distasteful to the proud independence of the
belted knight, and the undistinguishing equality to which
fire-arms reduce the bravest and the weakest, the hero and
the poltroon, was a fatal blow to the military pride of feudal
chivalry. With chivalric warfare ceased also the martial
and courtly sports which were its school, and the youthful
and gallant knight could no longer prove before the admir
ing eyes of his mistress, in mimic war, how well he merit
ed the golden spurs which he had won in the melee of
mortal combat. These changes, the chivalrous spirit of the
soldier of fortune, and the individuality of thought, feeling,
and action, which was eminently characteristic of that age,
could not brook, and he who sought to rise by merit, being
driven to carve out a new path for his own advancement,
rejoiced to find, in discovery, conquest, and colonization, a
new and inviting field, wide enough to exhaust his utmost
energies, invested with the sublime romance of distant ad
venture and unknown dangers, and bright with the promise
of the most shining rewards.
During this period, too, the Ottoman power was at its
height. The gallies of the Infidel were rowed by Christian
slaves, and the clang of the Turkish cymbal disturbed the
dreams of the Western princes. Christianity itself was
threatened with extinction, and the boldest feared the issue
of the doubtful struggle between the Moslem and the Giaour.

32
The colossal power of half-civilized Russia had not yet in-
terposed its impassible barrier against the incursions of the
barbarian, and even after the Atlantic shores of our own
continent were fringed with colonies exulting in the security
of Christian freedom, the Pope still trembled in the Vatican,
lest the Imaum of St. Sophia should expel the monk from
St. Peters, and the prayers of Islam be chaunted where mass
was sung. All Europe rang with the
" rumors loud that daunt remotest kings,"
and Stahremberg could have held out but one day longer,
when John Sobieski came to the relief of the fainting city,
and taught, by one final lesson, what men now scarcely
dared to hope, that the Mussulman was not to give law to
the Christian, and that the crescent was not foredoomed to
shine upon the prostrate cross.
But I pass over other exciting and agitating influences, to
refer to one above and beyond them all, — an event so sin
gularly in accordance with the genius of that age, and so
intimately connected with it by relations of action and re
action, that one is at a loss to know, whether it partakes
more of the character of cause or effect. I mean the glorious
Reformation, which set free from moral and intellectual
slavery a world that had groaned in bondage for a thousand
years. The Reformation gave permanence and consistence
to impressions and impulses which might otherwise have
been as fleeting as the causes which produced them, and the
continued prevalence and more full development of its doc
trines must be considered as the principal cause why the

33
spirit of progress, which distinguished the sixteenth century,
is at this hour the greatest blessing and the most obvious
characteristic of those nations, where its principles are most
clearly apprehended and most cordially adopted.
Great Britain, from her isolated position, was later in feel
ing the various influences to which I have alluded, than
many continental countries, and they came to her more or
less modified by time, distance, and other circumstances.
Partially conflicting as they were with each other, they yet
tended to the same common result, and finally harmonized
and blended into a general impulse, closely coincident with
the better features of the hereditary type of old English
character. The maximum of their effect upon the British
people was not reached until the reign of Elizabeth. The
sun of England's glory, the dawn of her true golden age,
then rose in splendor, and after a course of a hundred years,
dimmed only by royal wrongs, it set in shame, with the rise
of the baleful evening star, that heralded the elevation of
the vilest of British kings. Spenser sung the matins of that
centurial day, and Milton,
" In darkness, and with dangers compassed round,"
chaunted the even-song of the dying swan. The British
nation was then not the accomplice of its rulers. It had no
part in the murder of Elizabeth's royal guest, no share in
the malignant follies of the crazy James, or the crimes of the
accursed triumvirate, Strafford, Laud and Stuart. By one
single noblest act, it disowned and avenged them all,

34
" Upon the neck of crowned Fortune proud
Did rear God's trophies,"
and having, by a great example, shown, that the people
possess not the physical power only, but the rightful author
ity, to depose and solemnly judge their rulers, it established
the principle, that it is a crime in a Christian nation to be
oppressed. Under such impulses as I have described, the Gothic mind
attained its most perfect development, in the character of the
great sect to which the Pilgrims belonged, and partook of all
the holy, purifying, and ennobling influences of the time.
Happily for their posterity and for humanity, the truly
kingly argument of royal James prevailed, — majesty exe
cuted its magnanimous threat, and our forefathers were
" harried out of the land," before that character had be
come enervated, or its lofty energies spent, and they brought
with them the moral virtues of the rigid Puritan, combined
with the intellectual elevation of unfettered Christian phi
losophy, and the chivalrous heroism of bannered knighthood.
Of the concurrent influences which contributed to form
the English character of that era, the Reformation was in
disputably the most important, and it is therefore essential
to my purpose briefly to examine the true character of that
great event. Its great characteristic was individuality of
thought and action, its great principle, the right and duty of
private judgement, its great immediate work, the overthrow
of that idol phantom, which u the likeness of a kingly crown
had on," — the refutation of the claims of the visible church
to reverence, as itself a continuing revelation, or rather a

35
divine agency, possessed of a qualified personality, a species
of incarnation of the Deity, and a fit and lawful object of
worship. It is this characteristic of individual action, which so
strikingly distinguishes the Reformation from all other great
religious movements. In the first promulgation of the
Christian religion, mere humanity was passive. God spake,
and man had but to hear and obey. None of the funda
mental truths of Christianity originated in the intellect of
man, but the oracle being pronounced, it was committed to
universal human reason to expound it, and this fact, before
unknown or long forgotten, is the great discovery of the Re
formers. Fifteen centuries thus elapsed, before the true key
was applied to the interpretation of the plainest of dispensa
tions, and thenceforth human intellect was free to pursue its
highest study, the relations between man and his maker.
I cannot here pause to develop in detail the spirit of the
Reformation, or to point out the incalculable importance of
its results to the moral and intellectual being of man, but I
must not omit to notice two great doctrines, equally insepar
able from the principle of the right and duty of private
judgement. The one is the theological dogma of the suffi
ciency of the scriptures, as a rule of faith and practice, and
the other is the political theory of the natural equality of all
men ; equality in kind, though, by reason of diversity of
gifts, not in degree, of rights and duties. The doctrine of
the sufficiency of the pure word of God had indeed been
preached at an earlier day, but it was brought into distinct
prominence, by the sect which thence took the name of Pu
ritans, and its adoption at once relieved Christianity from

36
the burden of arbitrary forms, which, incapable of the ex
pression of abstract principle, do at best but symbolize truth,
with doubtful obscurity, and from those frivolous supersti
tions, and remnants of material worship, which, in many
nominally Christian countries, make the intelligent infidels,
and the ignorant idolaters. The theory of natural equality
is the true foundation of the doctrine of self-government,
which is indeed its necessary corollary, and thus our civil as
well as our religious liberties are mainly due to the Refor
mation. That these doctrines were not always clearly stated, or
even distinctly apprehended, by every father of the Reform
ed church is no doubt true, but they are logical deductions
from their principles, and were obviously felt, and more or
less definitely recognized by all of them.
I may be pardoned, if I here pause to notice and rebuke
that shallow philosophy, which judges sects or parties, by
the single acts or declarations of individuals, whose errors
are often the fault of the age, or the temperament of the
man, or the mere excess of reaction, rather than by their
fundamental principles, which, lying at the base of the
system, must in the end make themselves felt and acknow
ledged, and thenceforth characterize the action of their
adherents. Individual instances of fanaticism or ecclesiastical
tyranny in the Reformers or the Puritans, therefore, have no
tendency to convict their system of error, while the intole
rance and bigotry of their opponents are the necessary
consequence of the exclusive principles they maintain. The
apparent results of the promulgation of great truths are often
for a time equivocal, and even paradoxical. The weight at

37
the end of a cord passing over a pulley follows the hand that
draws it, though moving in a contrary direction. The true
results are slowly developed, and it is sometimes a full cen
tury between seed time and harvest. A principle never
produces its legitimate fruits, until it is precisely and distinctly
enunciated, and men often act in partial accordance with
truth, from some dim and half unconscious apprehension of
its spirit, long before any master mind has clearly developed
and proclaimed it.
If, then, the character of the Puritanical system, as fairly
deducible from a priori examination of its abstract principles,
be compared with its actual tendencies, as developed in
practice, it will be found that experience has most amply
confirmed the promises of its theory. No where has there
been more of liberty and less of license, no where more of
public charity and less of private ostentation, no where more
of Christian influence and less of priestly usurpation, no
where more of Heaven's best blessings and fewer of its
judgments, than in Puritanical New England.
Nor, on the other hand, are we authorized to conclude,
that those uncharitable and exclusive systems, which have
taken root among us, are harmless in their tendencies, because
they have not yet here produced the mischiefs which have
flowed from them in European countries, and which seem to
be involved in their very principles. Here, they are held in
check, and modified in their action, by the want of numerical
force, the influence of free institutions, the separation of
church and state, the fundamental law of the land. But he
who would know their real character, as developed in their
action, must study their workings in times and countries,

38
where they have been least obstructed. Intolerance is of the
essence of every exclusive system, and he that holds to the
necessity of conformity will assuredly enforce it, whenever
he feels that he can safely exercise the power.
It is, as I have already hinted, a great error to suppose
that the Reformation was but a change of religion. It was
equally a reformation in the state, and implied an universal
political revolution. The doctrines to which I have alluded
came to be considered as equally truths of Christianity and
of civil polity. They necessarily laid the axe at the root of
aristocracy in the state as well as in the church. The priest
hood, which had stolen the insignia, and profanely arrogated
the office, of both Jewish and Pagan hierarchy, having been
found to be an usurper, lawfully claiming its great privileges
neither by grant nor succession, it was natural that men
should inquire by what title the baron held his prerogatives,
and the consequence was, that both lay and ecclesiastical
lords were stripped of their dignities, or restricted in their
assumed privileges, in every commonwealth, which adopted
the reformed religion, and the Reformation thus took the first
step towards the practical abolition of abuses, that Revelation
had abrogated, fifteen hundred years before.
By one of those strange practical paradoxes, of which
history furnishes so many examples, the boasted champions
of the largest liberty, and the narrowest oppugners of the
right of private judgment, are now exemplifying the ten
dency of extremes to meet, by uniting in a jarring alliance,
and warring with common hate, but incongruous zeal, against
the principles of the Reformation. The former teach that
the mental slavery of the dark ages is strictly compatible

39
with the most unbounded freedom of personal action, and
the latter, that this same moral and intellectual bondage is
the only means of suppressing or controlling the destructive
and anarchical tendencies which they justly ascribe to their
allies in this unholy cause. The conservative and destructive
parties then begin alike. Both aim to overthrow all that is
good and venerable in our civil and ecclesiastical polity, and
while the one proposes to erect, on the ruins of our present
scheme of rational liberty restrained by law, a new wonder
working system, wherein each shall enjoy unlimited personal
license, miraculously combined with supreme control over
the action of his neighbor, the other uses ultra democracy as
a bugbear to frighten, and pretended conservatism as a lure
to persuade, us into apostacy from our hereditary principles,
and an unqualified surrender of our reason into the hands of
those who claim a divine right to overrule it. It requires not
the eye of a prophet to discern the ultimate common tendency
of these discordant teachings, and no man versed in history
can doubt, that the triumph of either party would alike in
volve the final destruction of every valuable feature of Ame
rican society. Religious conservatism asks us to admit, that
the Almighty has abdicated the reins of his moral and
spiritual government, and that princes and prelates are the
rightful successors to the vacant throne. Progress, arriving
at the same result by a different route, brings us to that
anarchy of the multitude, which is the sure precursor of the
capricious tyranny of the despot, and the unrelenting rule
of the priest.
It will not be amiss to cast a glance at the obscure and
distant past, and to inquire what we have to gain by abandon-

40
ing the venerable institutions of our fathers, and restoring
the dark and mouldering fabric, that Heaven's own vengeful
lightning long since overthrew.
The vaunted period, whose characteristic traits you are
asked to revive, extends from the eleventh to the sixteenth
century, from Hildebrand to Luther. This was the boasted
age of chivalry, the golden era of Catholic Christianity,
when the temporal supremacy of the church was almost
universally acknowledged ; kings submitted to flagellation
at the hands of a monk, and emperors held the stirrup of
the Roman pontiff. This is the age in which it has been
made our reproach, that America has no part, the age to
which the romancer and the novelist refer us for all the
graces that adorn humanity ; the historian, for the highest
examples of civil and political excellence ; the Romanist, for
the most perfect form of Christian life. But what was the
real condition of Europe during these five centuries of re
finement, loyalty, heroism and Christian devotion ? It is a
matter of some difficulty to penetrate the thick obscurity that
shrouds the popular history of times, whose only chroniclers
were the haughty noble and the unsympathizing monk ; but
even from these unwilling witnesses enough can be extracted
to prove that humanity has, at no time, and in no land,
groaned under heavier burdens than those imposed on its
suffering shoulders by the priesthood and the barons of Chris
tian Europe in the middle ages. The critical student of
mediaeval history beholds a scene, to use those awful words
of Milton, " With dreadful faces thronged, and fiery arms,"

41
and the lurid light that glares from the pile of the martyr, and
the incendiary flames of feudal warfare, suffices to show, that
behind the glittering curtain of knightly and baronial life,
there lay and writhed a world of woe. The rights of man,
as man, found no advocate, the rights of conscience, no de
fender. It was not yet discovered, that the ruler, the law
maker, is bound by the law he promulgates, and law itself
was known, not as the dictate of reason aiming at the com
mon good, but as another name for organized oppression or
arbitrary will. Municipal law indeed, except in cities and
boroughs, which had bought their liberties, existed only as
a measure, not of common rights, but of privilege, in dero
gation of right, and there was no controlling authority, but
the canons of the church and the will of the stronger. So
ciety was a pandemonium, where every unholy passion
revelled without restraint, and the rights of the ruler knew
no limit, but that of his power to enforce them. The vassals
of every feudal lord, whether lay or ecclesiastical, were
bound to till his fields, to minister the means of gratifying
every passion and supplying every want, to adopt his quar-
rels, to follow him in his wars of glory, conquest or revenge,
to live in his service, to die in his cause. If he fell into the
power of his enemy, they furnished forth the ransom, if he
married a daughter, they provided the dowry, if he made
his son a knight, they defrayed the expenses of the equi
page, the feast and the tournament. If he desired to
strengthen his castle, or enlarge his dungeons, they labored,
unpaid, to build the fortress, which was designed lo awe
them into unresisting submission, and the prisons in which
they were doomed to pine, if they incurred his lordly dis-

42
pleasure. The grave, even, was an occasion of new ex
actions by the allied vultures of church and state, and when
death released the hunted victim from the grasp of his op
pressors, the priest who had shrived the dying sinner,
lingered to choose from the little herd the fattest beast,
while the bailiff was ransacking the house of mourning, to
select for his lord the choicest, treasure as their lawful per
quisites of mortuary and heriot.
Such were the universally conceded rights of the lord,
such the undisputed duties of the vassal. But these were
not all, these were not even the worst oppressions. Beyond
all these, the Christian baron claimed and exercised rights
that we cannot name, and from the assertion of which, even
the Mogul or the Turk would recoil ; and, if not satisfied
with the enjoyment of all these oppressive privileges, he
chose to resort to force, to extort what he could not lawfully
exact, yet the law, which nominally restrained him, pro
vided no sanction against its own violation, and the wronged
and injured vassal was utterly withoutredress. These outrages
were sanctioned and aggravated by an every where present,
overawing, unreasoning, unsympathizing influence, which
strengthened the arm of the civil power by all the terrors of
eternal perdition, and sought to force Heaven itself into a
league with the oppressor. Thus the constitution of the state
not only allowed, but but even invited, those awful oppres
sions, and the sword and the crosier combined to put down
every attempt of the populace, to recover those rights, with
out which man is no longer human. Resistance indeed was
sometimes attempted by the humbler classes, but the superi-

43
or skill and discipline of the nobles, aided by the anathemas
ofthe church, which mingled its thunders with the shout of
" the riders that trampled them down," never failed to tri
umph over the ignorant, ill-trained and slavish peasantry,
and European historians still treat these spasms of agonized
humanity, these writhings of the worm that is trodden upon,
as treasonable insurrections, instigated by the hope of plun
der and rapine, and aggravated by every crime that disgraces
humanity. In all these struggles, we scarcely find a single ecclesiastic
arrayed upon the side of mercy, scarcely a single tonsured
advocate of the rights of man. But I should do injustice,
were I here to omit to notice the heroic John Ball, honor to
his name ! who purchased a lasting renown, by daring to
prefer the cause of humanity to the interests of his order.
Thrice was this " folysshe preest," as the old chronicler calls
him, incarcerated, not in the royal dungeons as a rebel, but
in the " Bysshop of Canterburie's prison" as an ecclesias
tical offender, for the crime of preaching the Christian doc
trine of equality. But neither chains, nor the fear of death,
were able to quell his generous spirit, and he persevered in
his noble, but unavailing efforts, until he sealed his testimony
with his blood.*
Nor is it true, that these ages were remarkable for the ex
ercise of Christian benevolence. 'Ihe artifices of the clergy,
indeed, extorted large sums for the erection of hospices for
the pilgrims to the numerous shrines of idolatrous supersti-

Froissart (Lord Berner's translation), Vol. I. cap. 381.

44
tion, and the religious houses dealt out a meagre dole to the
starving poor, whom their own exactions had contributed to
impoverish, but it may well be doubted, whether the aggre
gate charities of Catholic Europe ever exceeded the legal
provision, which we are compelled to make for the outcast
mendicants and malefactors, whom the generous munificence
of Europe ejects upon our shores, to mend our morals and
reform our religion, because it finds it cheaper to transport
them hither, than to maintain them in almshouses and prisons
at home.
The period we are considering was not distinguished alone
by unrelenting tyranny and brutal oppression. It was indeed
emphatically an era of spiritual and intellectual darkness.
No ray from the few and distant lights, that twinkled through
the gloom, e'er fell upon the groping multitude, from whom
they were as far removed as the telescopic stars from earth's "
orbit. The great and good minds, which to our sharpened
vision shine conspicuous through the murky night, were but
suns in eclipse to their contemporaries. They wrote and
spoke for each other, and it was no part of their vocation to
dispel the darkness, that enveloped the erring wanderers
beneath them. So, in the material heavens, resounding orb
responds to orb, but mortal ears are deaf to the music of
their harmony ; resplendent sphere enlightens sphere, but
they illuminate not the chaotic void, through which they
wheel their appointed courses, and the pathway of the most
radiant star retains no vestige of the beams it sheds.
Superficial speculators affect to treat the prevailing opin
ions, in regard to the debased condition of society in the

45
middle ages, as a vulgar prejudice, and ask us to judge the
spirit of those times, not by the general character and funda
mental principles of their institutions, or their actual influ
ence on the physical and moral well being of man, but by
the lives and opinions of the few enlightened men, who were
distinguished rather by their relative superiority to the con
temporary standard of their age, than by their intrinsic ex
cellence. But here the error lies in a supposed analogy
between those times and our own. There is in our day, a
class of the factitious great, who follow, rather than lead,
public opinion, and whose whole wisdom consists in an
instinctive sagacity, that enables them to predict and antici
pate the changes of that shifting current, and thus to appear
to guide its movements, when in fact they are but the first to
yield to its impulse. The lives of such are indeed a sure
index to the temper of times and countries, where public
opinion has any substantive existence. But in the ages of
which we speak, there was no recognized public, no com
mon reason, in short, no community. As the French
monarch said of himself, the ruler was the state, and the
priest was the church.
The learned of the middle ages had no sympathies, no
common language, no common interests with the mass of
their contemporaries, and in general exerted no influence
over their own age, unless it were by the mere superiority of
intellect over brute force. But man can beneficially influ
ence man, only through the medium of sympathetic relations,
and when this golden chain is severed, the teacher becomes
a tyrant, and the pupil a slave.
From all these horrors, the Reformation was the one in-

46
dispensable, and only sufficient means of deliverance, as its
principles are still our only safeguard. It is yet too soon to
assume, that its results are fully developed, but its funda
mental grounds seem to involve all that is necessary for the
erection of a harmonious but independent system of civil
and ecclesiastical polity, which shall be as perfect as human
nature will admit.
The free development of its principles has received a
check, from the re-action which followed the overthrow of
Napoleon, and one can hardly cast a glance at the recent
history of the human mind in Europe, and especially in that
country, which common consent places at the head of the
European political system, without doubting whether society
be not in fact retrograding, instead of advancing. Observe
the exclusive devotion of British intellect to schemes of me
chanical and material improvement, the humble character,
with few exceptions, of her philosophical writers, the shallow
tone of her assthetical criticism, the universal idolatry of
rank and wealth, the suffering and brutified condition of the
masses ; considei that the doctors of her religion are reviv
ing old and effete superstitions, closing their eyes to the
beams of the noon-day sun, and groping in the darkness of
the middle ages for spiritual light, and you can scarcely re
sist the conclusion, that, to use the quaint words of that
apochryphal fragment ascribed to Sir Thomas Browne,
" she is grown oblivious and doteth. Her ancient civility
is gone, and her face become wrinkled and tetrick."
Wordsworth seems to have deeply felt all this, when, in
that noble sonnet, he invoked the spirit of the mighty Pu
ritan, whose " soul was like a star, and dwelt apart," in

47
words too harsh for me to quote, too true, perhaps, for him
now to dare to utter.*
The " dishonest vietory" of Waterloo, necessary, perhaps,
for the rescue of Europe from the temporary iron rule of a
military despotism, came full ten years too soon, and unhap
pily arrested, before his task was done, that great usurper,
who, himself a despot and a tyrant, was unconsciously
working out his high vocation of preparing men for the ac
quisition and enjoyment of rational freedom, by battering
down old and mischief-working institutions, practically re
futing hoary falsehoods, and dispelling the mists of antiqua
ted prejudice. The principal aim of those, who have ad
ministered the governments of Europe since the downfall of
Napoleon, seems to have been to carry back the shadow on
the dial, to re-construct the shattered walls, and replace the
rotten frame-work which he had demolished. Restitution,

" Milton ! thou shouldst be living at this hour :
England hafh need of thee ; she is a fen
Of stagnant waters : altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men ;
Oh ! raise us up, return to us again :
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart ;
Thou hadst -a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free.
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness ; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties .on herself did lay."

48
not reparation, has been their motto, and the clergy of those
countries, which have a religion of state, considering them
selves official members of the body politic, have emulated
and outstripped their superiors in this bad work of re-edifi
cation, and not content with simple restoration, are seeking,
with more or less of openness, to re-build not only what
Napoleon, but even what Luther overthrew.
Even with us, too, the evil leaven is at work. The re
action, which, as some tokens hopefully indicate, is well
nigh spent at its source, has at length extended hither, and
a retrograde spirit is spreading among us, unhappily unac
companied by the corrective, which, in Europe, deprives it
of half its power of mischief. I mean that intense nation
ality, which now pervades every European people, from the
bare North cape to the southernmost headland of smiling
Greece. The national pride of the phlegmatic Northman,
the ardent son of the fervid South, the philosophic German,
the mercurial Frenchman, and the semi-oriental Sclavonian,
has been roused, and each is striving, with enlightened and
hourly increasing zeal, to restore the vernacular tongue of
his native land to its ancient purity, and to excite contempo
rary emulation by bringing into the light the history of its
earlier ages, and thus to awaken that love of country, which
the cosmopolite theories of French philosophy were threat
ening with general extinction, while the progress of French
arms seemed to portend for Paris a supremacy like that of
Rome, when even the Greek gloried in being a native of a
city, to whose children the privileges of Roman citizenship
had been vouchsafed.
Knowing that neither can there be private virtue without

49
a generous patriotism, wise men every where foster this
spirit, and teach that even the hardy energies of the early
stages of semi-barbarous society are not to be despised as
void of instruction. In them, we see the germs of more ex
panded and cultivated virtues. They deposited in the earth
the pabulum of better fruits, even as by the generous econo-
omy of material nature, wild and spontaneous vegetation
feeds, not exhausts, the fruitfulness of the soil, and by al
ternate growth and decay, elaborates from earth, water, air,
and lays up in store for future ages, the materials of fertility
for plants of nobler growth.
The love of country, with all the reverential sympathies
it implies, is among the strongest impulses in every rightly
constituted mind, and next to self-respect, is the most im
portant ingredient in the character of a virtuous man. The
mental eye, unlike the natural, magnifies objects as they re
cede, and every true man cherishes for his ancestry an affec
tionate partiality, that leads him to see in them the virtues
of the golden, combined with the wisdom of the iron age.
It is in this feeling, that we find the root of true conser
vatism, and, every movement, whether retrograde or pro
gressive, which wars with this sacred impulse, is not unwise
merely, but unnatural, unchristian, criminal.
It is to the want of an intelligent national pride — the uni
versal solvent, which melts and combines into a harmonious
whole the otherwise discordant traits of individual and local
feeling — that we must ascribe the non-existence of a well-
defined and consistent American character. We have abund
ance of inflated complacency in the present, abundance of
boastful expectation in respect to the future, but too little of

50
sympathetic and reverent regard for a glorious past, without
which, neither this present nor that future had been possible.
This is partly the effect of a diversity of origin, local in
terests and political relations, under a federative system, but
its real source lies deeper, and its root may be found in one
of our proudest characteristics. It is proper to all free peo
ple, and eminently to that family of nations to which we
belong, to love abstract truth beyond material symbols, to
follow the spirit, instead of adhering to the form, and to bow
to the principle, rather than to worship its visible manifes
tation. But honorable and noble as this propensity is, it is
not without its dangers. In seeking for abstract truth, we
are prone to overlook the conditions which limit its practical
application, and to forget, that in the moral and the political,
as well as the physical world, the deductions of science can
never be strictly realized in practice. Nor is this the only,
or even the greatest danger, to which the trait in question
exposes us. Doctrines tied to no forms, connected with no
localities, relying upon no authority but individual reason,
attaching no sacredness to aught cognizable by the senses,
are more easily overthrown, than when they assume the
shape of belief, entrenched behind the bulwarks of form,
prejudice and opinion. In Europe, where every rock has
its name, every landscape its history, the love of country
and its institutions, is at once strengthened by thousands of
venerable associations, and narrowed to the humble shape
rather of attachment to localities, than of enlightened and
expanded patriotism. But with us, who have no dim tradi
tions, no hoary fables, to give, not individuality only, but
almost life, to plain and mountain, and rock and river, pat-

51
riotism, though a larger, nobler, and more intellectual sen
timent, is yet a less tenacious impulse. It is, therefore, a
duty most solemnly incumbent upon every man, who prizes
institutions dependent like ours upon no other security than
a sound public opinion, and who feels himself competent to
appreciate the grounds upon which they are built, to exert
that " one talent which is death to hide," in maintaining,
defending and popularizing their principles. Our American
liberties are menaced, not by apathy and ignorance alone,
but we have too many proofs of the existence, even among
ourselves, of a determined hostility to the cardinal princi
ples on which they rest. Nor let any deny the approach of
danger, because as yet he hears not the din, and sees not the
smoke of the encounter. The earthquake, which upheaves
mountains, and the tempest, that scatters an armada, are in
visible forces, but there are tokens whereby wise men fore
see the shock. Such indications of danger to our dearest
interests we may find among a class of our own citizens,
who glory in a truckling submission to European teachings,
in an unnatural alienation from all that is great and good
and reverend in our own history, in a dignified affectation of
supercilious contempt for every manifestation of conscious
American pride, in a wrong headed perversity, that loves to
dwell on the dark side of our national character, clothes in
the livery of anxious fear the wishes of an alien heart, and
feigns to tremble for the stability of those institutions which
it is doing its utmost to undermine. We have too much of
that blind zeal of the pupil, which outruns the precepts of
its foreign teachers, too much of that questionable Protest
antism, that trembles with sympathetic fear when you at-

52
tack the corruptions of Popery, too much of that craven and
traitorous spirit, that is ashamed of its birthplace, murmurs
against the Providence which appointed its fatherland, and
grieves, because it is only through the Pilgrims, that it can
trace its lineage to their titled and mitred oppressors. Nay,
more than this ; sons of New England have dared to insult
the memory, and blaspheme the God, of their fathers, by
denying to that congregation, which He gathered in the
wilderness, the name and attributes of a Christian Church.
It may indeed be doubted, whether it be possible now to
construct a harmonious type of national American character
out of the discordant materials which have been assembled,
and which an unwise and short-sighted policy suffers to be
kept in perpetual fermentation, by the infusion, not of new
ingredients only, but of hostile elements. A nation, like an
organic being, must grow, not by accretion, but by develop
ment, and should receive into its system nothing incapable
of assimilation. But from this and many other influences
pernicious to the symmetry of our national character, New
England is, happily, in a great measure, exempt. I arro
gate not for her a monopoly of all the excellences of Amer
ican genius, nor do I insist that she is the sole depositary of
the vital principles of American life, but her population is
homogeneous in its origin, her component parts harmonious
in their organization, and she possesses the unity of character
that belongs to a people, which owes its aggregate existence
to one great end — the noblest end that can inspire social
man — the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty. Are
then this character, and the institutions to which it has
given birth, worth preserving 1 This is the great question,

53
which New England and her sons are called upon now to
answer, once and forever. For if our individuality is lost,
our hereditary principles abandoned for a single hour, there
is no recuperative energy, by which we can re-assume the
vitality we have suicidally surrendered. The alchemists
professed to be able to consume the flower, and raise it
again out of its ashes. But it was at best a shadowy resur
rection, and the visible image had neither fragrancy, color,
nor life. A nation has but a single life, and the people
that perishes, because it is recreant to itself, c.an hope for no
palingenesia. We are then summoned by every consideration of present
interest, of enlightened patriotism, of decent respect for the
memory of our fathers, of reverence for tbe religion of our
God, to do our utmost to keep alive the sacred fire, and to
transmit inviolate and unimpaired to future ages the heir
loom which it is a crime to alienate. To our Pergamus a
palladium is committed. To New England our common
country must look, as the purest source and surest repertory
of those true conservative principles in church and state,
without which, both church and state will soon become no
blessing, but a curse.
The greatest of living poets has told us, that the language
of freedom has two principal dialects.
" Two Voices are there ; one is of the sea,
One of the mountains : each a mighty Voice :
In both from age to age thou didst rejoice,
They were thy chosen music, Liberty !"

54
These voices are emphatically the nursery hymns of our
ancient mother. The infant ear of all her sons is tuned to
the " roar
Of ocean on a wintry shore,"
or the howlings of the storm, whose wings are heavy with
frozen mists from the cavernous recesses of her rugged
mountains. No alien soil intercepts our morning dawn.
The earliest beams of the orient sun, emerging from ocean's
bed, are shed full upon our old metropolis, and his waning
rays long linger on the soaring peaks of our everlasting
hills — fit emblem of the light of Christian freedom, which
first illuminated our own " gray fathers," and shall latest
gild the graves bf the Pilgrims, the cradles of their children.