inhabitants. The following morning, at daylight, they had just ended their prayers, and were preparing breakfast at their camp on the beach, when they heard a yell, and a flight of arrows fell among them. The assailants turned out to be thirty or forty Indians, who, being fired upon, retired. Neither side had been harmed. A number of the arrows were picked up, 66 some whereof were headed with brass, others with hart's horn, and others with eagles' claws."

15. Getting on board, they sailed all day along the shore in a storm of snow and sleet, making, by their estimate, a distance of forty or fifty miles without discovering a harbor. In the afternoon, the gale having increased, their rudder was disabled, and they had to steer with oars. At length the mast was carried away, and they drifted in the dark with a flood-tide. With difficulty they brought up under the lee of a "small rise of land." Here a part of the company, suffering from wet and cold, went on shore, though not without fear of hostile neighbors, and lighted a fire by which to pass the inclement night. In the morning, "they found themselves to be on an island,* secure from the Indians, where they might dry their stuff, fix their pieces, and rest themselves; and this being the last day of the week, they prepared there to keep the Sabbath."

16. "On Monday they sounded the harbor, and found it fit for shipping, and marched also into the land, and found divers corn-fields and little running brooks, a place, as they supposed, fit for situation; . . . so they returned to their ship again with this news to the rest of the people, which did much comfort their hearts." Such is the record of that event which has made the twenty-second of December a memorable day in the calendar.t-History of New England.

* Clark's Island, in Plymouth Harbor, said to have been afterward so named from the mate of the Mayflower. Some authors give 101 as the number of the Mayflower's passengers.

t. By the old style of reckoning it was Dec. 11. When the practice of celebrating the anniversary at Plymouth began, in 1769, eleven days were erroneously added to the recorded date, to accommodate it to the Gregorian style, which had been adopted in England in 1752. In 1620, however, the derangement of the calendar only amounted to ten days, and consequently the landing described in the text occurred on the 21st of December. Mr. Palfrey remarks, in this connection, that "an attempt has been made within a few years to substitute the true allowance of ten days; but the twenty-second day of December has taken a firm hold on the local thought and literature, which the twenty-first will scarcely displace."

The Pilgrim Fathers.-Pierpont.

1. The Pilgrim Fathers-where are they?
The waves that brought them o'er

Still roll in the bay and throw their spray,
As they break along the shore;

Still roll in the bay, as they rolled that day

When the Mayflower moored below,― When the sea around was black with storms, And white the shore with snow.

2. The mists that wrapped the Pilgrim's sleep Still brood upon the tide;

And the rocks yet keep their watch by the deep,
To stay its waves of pride.

But the snow-white sail that he gave to the gale,
When the heavens looked dark, is gone ;—
As an angel's wing, through an opening cloud,
Is seen, and then withdrawn.

3. The Pilgrim exile-sainted name!— The hill whose icy brow

Rejoiced when he came, in the morning's flame,
In the morning's flame burns now;

And the moon's cold light, as it lay that night
On the hillside and the sea,

Still lies where he laid his houseless head;-
But the Pilgrim-where is he?

4. The Pilgrim Fathers are at rest;

When summer's throned on high,

And the world's warm breast is in verdure dressed,

Go stand on the hill where they lie.

The earliest ray of the golden day

On that hallowed spot is cast;

And the evening sun, as he leaves the world,
Looks kindly on that spot last.

5. The Pilgrim spirit has not fled :

It walks in noon's broad light;

And it watches the bed of the glorious dead,
With the holy stars, by night.

It watches the bed of the brave who have bled,
And shall guard this ice-bound shore,

Till the waves of the bay, where the Mayflower lay,
Shall foam and freeze no more.

History of Plymouth.—The first winter was very severe, and in less than five months nearly one-half of that Pilgrim band died from the effect of exposure and privations, Governor Carver and his wife being among the number. William Bradford was thereupon elected to fill the vacancy, and during thirty years was active and conspicuous in the history of the colony.

In 1621, a treaty of friendship was made with Massasoit (mas-sa-soit'), chiet of the Wampanoags (wom-pa-nō'ags), that was sacredly observed for more than thirty years. Canonicus (ka-non'i-kus), chief of the Narragansetts, kept the colonists in fear for a while, but the decisive course of Bradford eventually compelled him to sue for peace.

Massachusetts Bay Colony.-In the mean time, other influences were at work to extend the range of settlements. A company composed of gentlemen who were interested in the fisheries and trade of New England, having purchased a tract of land, sent out an expedition of a hundred persons, under the charge of John Endicott. These reached Salem in 1628, and made a settlement, thus laying the foundation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The proprietors soon after obtained a charter from the king, under the incorporated title of "The Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay, in New England."

Accessions were rapidly made to the new colony, and settlements at Charlestown and other places were made. An important change took place in 1629, by which the government of the company was transferred from London to New England. This induced men of fortune and intelligence to become interested, among whom was John Winthrop, who was afterward elected governor, and who set sail for the colony in the beginning of April, 1630. Winthrop was accompanied by about three hundred families, mostly Puritans, who settled at Boston and adjacent places, in 1630.

*

The banishment of Roger Williams, in 1635, was an event not only important in itself, but also on account of the principle it enunciated. Though a Puritan, Williams denounced the religious intolerancev practised in New England; for which, as well as for certain opinions which he held touching civil matters, he was banished. Nor was this the only banishment. A Mrs. Hutchinson, who persisted in holding meetings of her own sex, and promulgating peculiar views, was also driven into exile.

* John Winthrop was born in Groton, county of Suffolk, England, in 1588. He was re-elected governor of Massachusetts every year until 1634. With the exception of two or three years, he was afterward deputy governor or governor until his death, which occurred in 1649.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, upon being sentenced to banishment, at first went to Rhode Island. After the death of her husband, which occurred in 1642, five years later, she removed with her children to New Netherlands. The Indians and the Dutch were then at war, and, in an attack made by the former, her house was set on fire, and she and all her family, except one child, either perished in the flames or were massacred by the savages.

RHODE ISLAND.

Roger Williams, and the Settlement of Providence.-Bancroft.

1. AT a time when Germany was the battle-field for all Europe in the implacable wars of religion; when even Holland was bleeding with the anger of vengeful factions; when France was still to go through the fearful struggle with bigotry"; when England was gasping under the despotism' of intolerance'; almost half a century before William Penn became an American proprietary'; and two years before Descartes (da-kart') founded modern philosophy on the method of free reflection,Roger Williams asserted the great doctrine of intellectual liberty. It became his glory to found a state upon that principle, and to stamp himself upon its rising institutions in characters so deep that the impress has remained to the present day, and can never be erased without the total destruction of the work.

2. The principles which he first sustained amidst the bickerings of a colonial parish, next asserted in the general court of Massachusetts, and then introduced into the wilds on Narragansett Bay, he soon found occasion to publish to the world, and to defend, as the basis of the religious freedom of mankind; so that, borrowing the rhetoric employed by his antagonist in derision, we may compare him to the lark, the pleasant bird of the peaceful summer, that, "affecting to soar aloft, springs upward from the ground, takes his rise from pale to tree," and at last, surmounting the highest hills, utters his clear carols through the skies of morning.

3. He was the first person in modern Christendom to assert in its plenitude the doctrine of the liberty of conscience, the equality of opinions before the law; and in its defense he was the harbinger of Milton, the precursor and the superior of Jeremy Taylor. For Taylor limited his toleration to a few Christian sects; the philanthropy of Williams compassed the earth: Taylor favored partial reform, commended lenity, argued for forbearance, and entered a special plea in behalf of

each tolerable sect; Williams would permit persecution of no opinion, of no religion, leaving heresy unharmed by law, and orthodoxy unprotected by the terrors of penal' statutes.

4. Taylor still clung to the necessity of positive regulations enforcing religion and eradicating error; he resembled the poets, who, in their folly, first declare their hero to be invulnerable', and then clothe him in earthly armor: Williams was willing to leave Truth alone, in her own panoply of light, believing that if, in the ancient feud between Truth and Error, the employment of force could be entirely abrogated", Truth would have much the best of the bargain.

5. It is the custom of mankind to award high honors to the successful inquirer into the laws of nature,-to those who advance the bounds of human knowledge. We praise the man who first analyzed the air, or resolved water into its elements, or drew the lightning from the clouds; even though the discoveries may have been as much the fruits of time as of genius. A moral principle has a much wider and nearer influence on human happiness; nor can any discovery of truth be of more direct benefit to society, than that which establishes a perpetual religious peace, and spreads tranquillity through every community and every bosom.

6. If Copernicus is held in perpetual reverence because, on his death-bed, he published to the world that the sun is the centre of our system; if the name of Kepler is preserved in the annals of human excellence for his sagacity in detecting the laws of the planetary motion; if the genius of Newton has been almost adored for dissecting a ray of light, and weighing heavenly bodies as in a balance, let there be for the name of Roger Williams at least some humble place among those who have advanced moral science, and made themselves the benefactors' of mankind.

7. Winter was at hand [when sentence of exile was pronounced against him]; Williams succeeded in obtaining permission to remain till Spring; intending then to begin a plantation on Narragansett Bay. But the affections of the people of Salem revived, and could not be restrained; they thronged