Perkins, of pronouncing the
word _damn_ with such an emphasis as left a doleful echo in their
auditors' ears a good while after. And it was natural that men who
captained or accompanied the exodus from existing forms and associations
into the doubtful wilderness that led to the promised land, should find
more to their purpose in the Old Testament than in the New. As respects
the New England settlers, however visionary some of their religious
tenets may have been, their political ideas savored of the realty, and it
was no Nephelococcygia of which they drew the plan, but of a commonwealth
whose foundation was to rest on solid and familiar earth. If what they
did was done in a corner, the results of it were to be felt to the ends
of the earth; and the figure of Winthrop should be as venerable in
history as that of Romulus is barbarously grand in legend.
I am inclined to think that many of our national characteristics, which
are sometimes attributed to climate and sometimes to institutions, are
traceable to the influences of Puritan descent. We are apt to forget how
very large a proportion of our population is descended from emigrants who
came over before 1660. Those emigrants were in great part representatives
of that element of English character which was most susceptible of
religious impressions; in other words, the most earnest and imaginative.
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