Truly
there is a tide in the affairs of men, but there is no gulf-stream
setting forever in one direction; and those waves of enthusiasm on whose
crumbling crests we sometimes see nations lifted for a gleaming moment
are wont to have a gloomy trough before and behind.
But the founders of New England, though they must have sympathized
vividly with the struggles and triumphs of their brethren in the mother
country, were never subjected to the same trials and temptations, never
hampered with the same lumber of usages and tradition. They were not
driven to win power by doubtful and desperate ways, nor to maintain it by
any compromises of the ends which make it worth having. From the outset
they were builders, without need of first pulling down, whether to make
room or to provide material. For thirty years after the colonization of
the Bay, they had absolute power to mould as they would the character of
their adolescent commonwealth. During this time a whole generation would
have grown to manhood who knew the Old World only by report, in whose
habitual thought kings, nobles, and bishops would be as far away from all
present and practical concern as the figures in a fairy-tale, and all
whose memories and associations, all their unconscious training by eye
and ear, were New English wholly.
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