Leave New England
out in the cold! While you are plotting it, she sits by every fireside in
the land where there is piety, culture, and free thought.
Faith in God, faith in man, faith in work,--this is the short formula in
which we may sum up the teaching of the founders of New England, a creed
ample enough for this life and the next. If their municipal regulations
smack somewhat of Judaism, yet there can be no nobler aim or more
practical wisdom than theirs; for it was to make the law of man a living
counterpart of the law of God, in their highest conception of it. Were
they too earnest in the strife to save their souls alive? That is still
the problem which every wise and brave man is lifelong in solving. If the
Devil take a less hateful shape to us than to our fathers, he is as busy
with us as with them; and if we cannot find it in our hearts to break
with a gentleman of so much worldly wisdom, who gives such admirable
dinners, and whose manners are so perfect, so much the worse for us.
Looked at on the outside, New England history is dry and unpicturesque.
There is no rustle of silks, no waving of plumes, no clink of golden
spurs. Our sympathies are not awakened by the changeful destinies, the
rise and fall, of great families, whose doom was in their blood.
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