[133] I do not mention Ulrici's book, for it seems to me unwieldy and
dull,--zeal without knowledge.
NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.[134]
The history of New England is written imperishably on the face of a
continent, and in characters as beneficent as they are enduring. In the
Old World national pride feeds itself with the record of battles and
conquests;--battles which proved nothing and settled nothing; conquests
which shifted a boundary on the map, and put one ugly head instead of
another on the coin which the people paid to the tax-gatherer. But
wherever the New-Englander travels among the sturdy commonwealths which
have sprung from the seed of the Mayflower, churches, schools, colleges,
tell him where the men of his race have been, or their influence
penetrated; and an intelligent freedom is the monument of conquests whose
results are not to be measured in square miles. Next to the fugitives
whom Moses led out of Egypt, the little ship-load of outcasts who landed
at Plymouth two centuries and a half ago are destined to influence the
future of the world. The spiritual thirst of mankind has for ages been
quenched at Hebrew fountains; but the embodiment in human institutions of
truths uttered by the Son of man eighteen centuries ago was to be mainly
the work of Puritan thought and Puritan self-devotion.
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