In 1631, not two years after the great exodus, it was decided by the General Court that none but church members should be considered free men and citizens with full voting powers. This of course led to immediate disadvantages and to consequent rebellion. "The fact that no one but church members could vote stirred up political dissatisfaction on the part of those who were not represented in the taxation they had to pay." Justice was administered with very arbitrary spirit and, as was naturally the case, law and ethics were often confounded. Clergymen obtained the chief places in the government and ruled from impractical biblical points of view and often from the principles of the Mosaic law. Reaction followed, and the more liberal thinkers sought an asylum from the very zeal they had helped provoke.

This growth of liberal thought had important and immediate outcome. The free thinkers had no wish to return to England where civil war was on the verge of outbreak, and where there was continual danger of the triumph of the state church. They had equally no desire to remain among their bigoted friends in Massachusetts Bay. Accordingly they left the places they had helped to found, and sought new homes for themselves in the fertile valley of the Connecticut. Of course they were to some degree urged on by the prospect of successful agriculture, and by the wish to compete with the Dutch, in fur trading with the Indians, but the first and greatest cause was the wish to form a commonwealth in which broader views might be permitted. Windsor, Wethersfield, and Hartford were settled, and the beginnings of Connecticut made.

The theocracy, affecting as it did these Connecticut pioneers who in the main were of Puritan views, could hardly fail to have more marked results among those who were of entirely different religious beliefs and customs. A common misunderstanding, and one which cannot too soon be done away with, is that the Puritans, persecuted at home, were filled with comparatively modern ideas of toleration and liberty in religion. Nothing is farther from the real facts of the case. The Puritans wished to escape persecution themselves, but they never intended to allow a bit of liberty to those whose views were unlike their own.

No wonder then that the lovable, if imprudent, Roger Williams was to encounter fiercest persecution because of his nine

teenth century ideas of individual relations to God, and the total separation of church and state. And here, as in the case of the more liberal Puritans, the stricter sect was obliged to preserve its stern views and to hold to its almost unreasoning decrees, for the sake of the mighty odds at issue. The religion. for which men were dying in England, and for which many had fled their native land, was not to be held lightly nor attacked with impunity. Williams had to leave the colony and seek refuge elsewhere. So Rhode Island, like Connecticut, was the result of the arbitrary Massachusetts theocracy.

This iron rule of Puritanism in Massachusetts prevented the immigration of French Huguenots, or of Scotch and Irish, or any others of foreign blood to whom the king's caprice might have given opportunity to settle. As a contemporaneous writer said, "God sifted the whole nation that he might send choice grain into the wilderness". The theocratic rule prevented the mixture of common seed.

Hand in hand with Puritan dogmatism in religion went obstinacy in politics. A charter which secured freedom from persecution in his religion was to be protected with the last drop of a Puritan's blood. The men of Massachusetts Bay never forgot for one moment their rights as Englishmen and equal subjects with their friends at home. Throughout the changes of the Civil War, the Protectorate, and the Restoration, Massachusetts clung to Winthrop's and Dudley's charter, sometimes by bold-faced resistance, sometimes by skilful evasion, but always for the sake of the great Puritan issue involved. The theocracy must remain a feature of Massachusetts Bay-no price was too great to pay for the temporal rule of Puritanism. Along with the production of this intensely dogmatic spirit came the much more important growth of deep Americanismof patriotism and loyalty. To the wish to perpetuate the theocracy we owe the sturdy resistance to the tyrannical rule of Andros and his king, and the preservation and increase of the liberty-loving spirit that led to the American Revolution.

LIZZIE SEAVER SAMPSON.

When the breeze from the East comes galloping by
O'er the silvery back of the close lying grass,
And the water runs smooth where the shadows lie,
In a race with the clouds that swiftly pass;
Then the river god like a fleet dark steed

Streaks down the course nor halts for rest,
But clears each fall with a gain of speed

As he shakes the foam from his tossing crest.

When the dust grows yellow against the sky
And the giddy leaves whirl round and round.
When the drooping willows grumbling sigh

And the stream replies with a snarling sound;
Then the river god at a thwarting rock

Rises to crush like a savage bear.

His spiteful claws about it lock,
Useless food for a hungry lair.

When winds in torment labouring breathe,
By iron-shouldered clouds oppressed,
And battling with the flood beneath

Writhe back and forth in wild unrest;
Then the river god like a dragon crawls,

His steel-gray scales alight with wrath, With quivering claws and shivering jaws, To seek his prey down the watery path.

When the sullen thunder growls afar

And the distant hills are gray with rain,
When the water clawing a sandy bar

Leaps back with tossing tawny mane;
Then the river god like a lion strides.
Green-eyed and swift he rages by,
With frothing mouth and heaving sides,
Now crouching low, now springing high.

When the thunder car comes rolling near,
Flame striking from his heavy wheels,
And the wet white aspens shake to hear
The dancing hail-fiend's clicking heels;
Then the river god goes charging by

As a young bull, Andalusian-bred,
Steel stung in neck and flank, his eye
Enraged by flaunted scarf of red;

Who dashes on with muffled roar

To kill, his sharp horns downward flung,

And falls before the matador,

The biting blade thrust in his lung.

ALICE MORGAN WRIGHT.

THE MAJOR'S ROSES

The wheezy old Southern train had coughed its weary way onward, leaving me stranded on the platform of a lonesomelooking station which nestled at the foot of a steep hill. I stood there a moment, lost in admiration of the wonderful view. Truly the beautiful Shenandoah valley had been rightly named "The Garden-spot of Virginia".

"Howdy, boss!" I turned around at the welcome sound of a voice, and saw a pleasant-faced young negro, with the remnant of a straw hat in his hands. "Shell I tek you ter de Ho-tel Peyton, suh? Bes' ho-tel in town, all de lates' mod'n improvisin's", and taking my satchel from my hand he led me around the station, where a horse of uncertain age was standing, hitched to a still more dubious-looking carryall. We were soon rattling along the road, bumping over stones and gullies at a pace that was not conducive to the repose of my recently overstrained

nerves.

After a dinner redolent with reminders not suggestive of Delmonico's, I walked over to the post-office to mail some letters. I was about to push them through the slot, when my arm was brushed by some one who had come in in a great hurry.

"I beg ten thousan' pahdans, suh, foh my inexpressible rudeness! I know, suh, it is quite unpahdonable to be in such a hurry, but it was of the utmost impo'tance that I should get that lettah in foh the down train."

I had turned quickly to assure him that the matter was of no consequence whatever, and saw a tall, thin old man, his erect military carriage at once betraying his service. He had on a long linen "duster", in the top buttonhole of which was a tiny pink rose, and as he carried his wide-brimmed slouch hat in his hand, I noted that he wore his rather long gray hair carefully roached back from a fine forehead. He wore neither beard nor moustache, which displayed to advantage his clean-cut jaw and his firm yet humorous mouth. Indeed I could well imagine what a fluttering he must have caused in the hearts of the maidens of some thirty years ago.

"Ah, I puhceive, suh," he was saying, "that you are a strangah in ou' midst. Allow me to introduce myself,-Majah Kerfoot Braxton, suh, at yo' service."

I explained that I had come to Peyton ville in search of a well-earned rest, and I went on to say that, although I was now a New Yorker, I was very proud of the fact that my family, the Bentleys, came from the grand old state of South Carolina. It was really funny to note the electrical change that came over Major Braxton. His manner had been cordiality itself before, but now he fairly beamed; he grasped my hand and shook it warmly.

"Where are you stayin', suh? Huah? Boa'ding at the Hotel Peyton! Nevah, suh! No friend of mine shall evah stay there while Braxton Hall is standin' on its foundations. I'll have 'Cage go right up now an' get yo' baggage." He would take no refusal, and indeed I was not sorry.

I had followed him outside the post-office, and I could scarcely restrain a smile at the sight which met my eyes. A heavy oldfashioned carriage, rusty with age, was standing there, with a big clothes-basket, evidently the washing, hanging from the hind axle. Hitched to it, with much rope-patched harness, were a long lank mule and a sleek young Kentucky saddlehorse, each carrying a saddle besides. The Major afterwards explained that this was to relieve the strain on the old carriage at the rough places on the road. To complete the picture, a smiling old darky stood at the head of the evidently indignant young saddle-horse.

My slender baggage, at which I think 'Cage secretly sniffed, had already been strapped on behind, and with the Major to point out the leading places of interest, the four miles to Braxton Hall passed quickly enough.

Yes, I expected it, but somehow not until now had I ever felt what the sadness of the decayed grandeur of the South really was. Weeds growing up everywhere, fences rotting and falling down, the empty, deserted slave-quarters, the magnificent old house whose rafters were never more to ring with the old-time merriment within; except, mayhap, with the ghostly laughter of the gay beaux and belles whom it sheltered "befoh de wah". Roses, roses, everywhere! They covered the entire front of the house, and hundreds of saucy pink faces peeped out at you around the massive old pillars or between the whitewashed railings of the porch.