Virginia and Maryland), by JOHN HAMMOND, published in London in 1656.

Books of this character and time can hardly be claimed for our literature. Their authors were Englishmen who happened to be visitors to Virginia, but who printed their books in England, and who, in almost every case, returned thither.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH was the first writer to send home an account of the wilderness into which he had journeyed and in which so many adventures befell him. His first book was The True Relation* of Virginia, published in London in 1608.

The Founders of New England landed at Plymouth in December, 1620. Within twenty years the population of the fifty towns of New England numbered twenty-one thousand souls. These people sought a land in which they might be free to think and to worship according to their own conscience. While the Virginians were laying up treasure upon earth, the men of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth were thinking of treasure in heaven.

There was among them a number of scholarly men. A considerable proportion of the Pilgrims were college-bred. In the small colony of Massachusetts Bay there were not less than seventy graduates of Cambridge and twenty graduates of Oxford.

Great importance was attached to education in the new colony. Before 1650 public instruction was compulsory throughout New England. The founders of New England, though stern in their piety, were book-lovers and filled with the enthusiasm for knowledge. The chief trait of our forefathers was earnestness. They were serious in all things. Whatever they did in politics, religion, education, or industry was done with prayer and earnest effort. This earnestness made their lives grave and often cheerless. Gayety

* "Relation "—that is, account or narrative.

and beauty were looked upon as things of evil. Their religion was solemn and their God wrathful. Their devotion to their creed and confidence in their faith made them intolerant of opposite opinions. They persecuted all who did not believe as they did. They drove Roger Williams out into the wilderness to find a home in Rhode Island. They tortured old women whom they believed to be witches, and inflicted the severest punishments for trifling offences. There was no charm nor beauty in their austere lives. The American Colleges.-In 1636 the Puritans of Massachusetts founded a college at Cambridge. It was called HARVARD, after a young Charlestown clergyman who bequeathed to the "school" eight hundred pounds in money and a considerable library. Nothing could illustrate more powerfully the high value set upon learning by our Puritan ancestors than this establishment of a college so soon after the first landing on these shores. The intelligence and the public spirit of the founders of our nation and of our literature are alike justified by it.

1. Harvard College was intended to teach the classical languages and Hebrew, and to train learned men for the service of the Church. It soon made its reputation on both sides of the ocean. It has been the school of the largest number of American writers. Throughout Colonial and Revolutionary times, and in dark days of our history, it has impressed upon the youth of the country how excellent a thing knowledge is.

2. Before the Pilgrims landed, in 1619, and again in 1622, the Virginians submitted proposals to England for the establishment of a university. That it might be safe from the ravages of Indians, it was proposed to build the college on an island in the Susquehanna River. But no institution of learning was actually established in Virginia until the close of the century. Then, in 1693, the College of WILLIAM AND MARY was founded.

It is a significant fact that the first and last battle-fields of

the Revolution were in the immediate neighborhood of these two colleges of Massachusetts and Virginia. There, where our patriots, soldiers, and statesmen had been educated, the war began and ended. It began on Bunker Hill, and Cornwallis surrendered in the vicinity of Williamsburg, the seat of the Virginian college.

Among the distinguished students of William and Mary were THOMAS JEFFERSON, PEYTON RANDOLPH, President of the Continental Congress of 1774, PRESIDENT JAMES MONROE, JUDGE BLAIR of the Supreme Court, and several of the governors of Virginia and Maryland.

3. In 1700, YALE COLLEGE was founded at New Haven, Connecticut, and from it, in the eighteenth century, came the most eminent thinker of colonial times, JONATHAN ED

WARDS.

4. The COLLEGE of NEW JERSEY dates from 1746; CoLUMBIA COLLEGE (New York), from 1754; the UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, from 1755; and BROWN UNIVERSITY (Rhode Island), from 1764.

The first Printing-Press was set up at Cambridge, Mass., in 1639. The first book printed on it was the Bay Psalmbook (1640), a collection of versified psalms of the most wretched character. It was partly compiled by Bishop Eliot, the Apostle to the Indians and translator of the Bible into the Indian tongue.

The Literature of New England was, throughout the Colonial period, of a religious character. The only questions of general interest were questions of theology. The writers of books and pamphlets were men who had fought for their religious opinions. They had exiled themselves that they might be free to worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience. Naturally, the first publications were in defence of their creed. Their only literary object was to explain divine truth as they perceived it. Religious books and pamphlets therefore form the great bulk of the publications of the Colonial period of Literature.

For instance, between the years 1706 and 1718 "all the publications known to have been printed in America number at least five hundred and fifty. Of these all but eighty-four were on religious topics, and of the eighty-four, forty-nine were almanacs."

Besides sermons, religious discourses, pious tracts, etc., there were a few historical writings, or, more correctly, diaries of contemporary events.

William Bradford (1588-1657), an important writer of the latter class, was the second governor of Plymouth Colony. He held that office almost every year from 1621 until 1657, when he died. His principal book, and the chief historical writing of early New England, was the History of Plymouth Plantation. It was left unpublished. The manuscript passed through several hands, and was at last placed in the library of Old South Church, Boston. When the British occupied Boston the library was plundered, and BRADFORD'S History disappeared. In 1855 it was found in the library of the bishop of London.

Other Historical Writers.-Of equal literary worth with Bradford's history, and of perhaps still more historical value, is the History of New England from 1630 to 1649, by JOHN WINTHROP (1588-1649), governor of Massachusetts Bay.

Thomas Morton (1575-1646), an adventurer, vexed the pious people of Massachusetts by establishing a boisterous crew of merry-makers at Mount Wollaston, now Braintree, Mass. This settlement, so offensive to the Puritans, he called "Merry Mount," and there he raised a May-pole and instituted the gay sports of Old England. Morton was charged with teaching Indians the use of fire-arms. He was arrested by Captain Miles Standish and sent to England. In 1637 he published The New England Canaan, full of ridicule of the Puritan faith and manners. He returned to Massachusetts, and was imprisoned for his unpardonable literary "scandal."

Nathaniel Ward (1579-1652), a minister of culture and experience, published in 1647, in London, one of the most curious books written in the colonies. It was called The Simple Cobbler of Aggawam (Essex). It was a sharp satire. on the new opinions that were then rife in both Old and New England-a truly vigorous polemic directed against long hair and female frivolity. All these books, however, are mere literary curiosities. They are not easily found by the general reader, and are hard enough reading when found. They are far more important in that they contain legends or facts that have been built up by more modern authors into romances, poems, and histories of enchanting interest. Thus, out of the dull materials of the books just mentioned Motley wrote his novel Merry Mount, and Hawthorne his May-pole of Merry Mount; Longfellow his New England Tragedies, and Whittier his John Underhill and the Familist's Hymn.

Two Colonial Poets.-In the bleak atmosphere of Puritanism flourished two writers of what, in the seventeenth century, passed for verse among the people of New England. They were ANNE BRADSTREET (1612-72) and MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH (1631-1715). The former wrote a dull poem to which she gave the following portentous title: Several Poems compiled with great Variety of Wit and Learning, full of Delight, wherein especially is contained a Complete Discourse and Description of the Four Elements, Constitutions, Ages of Men, Seasons of the Year, together with an exact Epitome of the Three First Monarchies, viz., the Assyrian, Persian, and Grecian, and the beginning of the Roman Commonwealth to the end of their last King; with divers other Pleasant and serious Poems, by a Gentlewoman of New England (Boston, 1640). Wigglesworth wrote the Day of Doom, a pitiful and painful attempt at poetry. It is a rhymed version of the Puritan doctrine of future punishment.

Cotton Mather (1663-1728). The greatest men of America during the colonial period were COTTON MATHER,