The Puritans had no notion of tolerating mischief. They looked
upon their little commonwealth as upon their own private estate and
homestead, as they had a right to do, and would no more allow the Devil's
religion of unreason to be preached therein, than we should permit a
prize-fight in our gardens. They were narrow; in other words they had an
edge to them, as men that serve in great emergencies must; for a Gordian
knot is settled sooner with a sword than a beetle.
The founders of New England are commonly represented in the after-dinner
oratory of their descendants as men "before their time," as it is called;
in other words, deliberately prescient of events resulting from new
relations of circumstances, or even from circumstances new in themselves,
and therefore altogether alien from their own experience. Of course, such
a class of men is to be reckoned among those non-existent human varieties
so gravely catalogued by the ancient naturalists. If a man could shape
his action with reference to what should happen a century after his
death, surely it might be asked of him to call in the help of that easier
foreknowledge which reaches from one day to the next,--a power of
prophecy whereof we have no example. I do not object to a wholesome pride
of ancestry, though a little mythical, if it be accompanied with the
feeling that _noblesse oblige_, and do not result merely in a placid
self-satisfaction with our own mediocrity, as if greatness, like
righteousness, could be imputed.
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