Puritanism was
dead, and its profession had become a wearisome cant before the
Revolution of 1688 gave it that vital force in politics which it had lost
in religion.
I have gleaned all I could of what is morally picturesque or
characteristic from these volumes, but New England history has rather a
gregarious than a personal interest. Here, by inherent necessity rather
than design, was made the first experiment in practical democracy, and
accordingly hence began that reaction of the New World upon the Old whose
result can hardly yet be estimated. There is here no temptation to make a
hero, who shall sum up in his own individuality and carry forward by his
own will that purpose of which we seem to catch such bewitching glances
in history, which reveals itself more clearly and constantly, perhaps, in
the annals of New England than elsewhere, and which yet, at best, is but
tentative, doubtful of itself, turned this way and that by chance, made
up of instinct, and modified by circumstance quite as much as it is
directed by deliberate forethought. Such a purpose, or natural craving,
or result of temporary influences, may be misguided by a powerful
character to his own ends, or, if he be strongly in sympathy with it, may
be hastened toward its own fulfilment; but there is no such heroic
element in our drama, and what is remarkable is, that, under whatever
government, democracy grew with the growth of the New England Colonies,
and was at last potent enough to wrench them, and the better part of the
continent with them, from the mother country.
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