tages accruing to them from their peculiar social organization. Especially did they grieve over the lack of educational privileges for their children; and from time to time they suggested methods for the establishment of accessible public schools. But they were in the gripe of hostile circumstances, and all their efforts were for that day vain. Besides, during a large portion of the seventeenth century, they had the affliction of a royal governor, Sir William Berkeley, who threw the whole weight of his office and the whole energy of his despotic will in favor of the fine old conservative policy of keeping subjects ignorant in order to keep them submissive. This policy, which he most consistently maintained throughout his entire administration, from 1641 to 1677, was frankly avowed by him in his celebrated reply to the English commissioners who in 1670 questioned him concerning the condition of Virginia: "I thank God there are no free schools, nor printing; and I hope we shall not have, these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both."1 We owe to Sir William the meed of our cordial acknowledgment that at least in this article of his creed he never failed to show his faith by his works, and that he did his best while governor of Virginia to secure the answer of his own dark prayer. And unfortunately when he was recalled from Virginia, his policy for the encouragement of popular ignorance was not recalled with him: on the contrary it was continued by the government at home, and was prescribed in the official instructions laid upon his successors. There is no record of a printing-press in Virginia earlier than 1681; and soon after a printingpress was set up, the printer was summoned before Lord Culpepper and required to enter into bonds "not to print anything hereafter, until his majesty's pleasure shall be 1 Hening, II. 511. known," a gracious way of intimating a perpetual prohibition. In 1683, when Lord Effingham came out as governor of Virginia, he received from the ministry instructions "to allow no person to use a printing-press on any occasion whatsoever."2 From that date onward till about the year 1729, no printing was done in Virginia; and from 1729 until ten years before the Declaration of Independence, Virginia had but one printing-house, and even that "was thought to be too much under the control of the governor."3 What a base extremity of intolerance! And how base the popular listlessness which could permit it! In other countries it has been thought hard enough to have the printing-press clogged by the interference of official licensers and spies; in Virginia the printing-press was forbidden to work at all. There, even the first thrust of the press-man's lever was a crime. The whole truth with reference to the intellectual condition of Virginia in the seventeenth century will not be come manifest to us, unless we rest our eyes on still another trait. Thought was not free in Virginia; religion was not free in Virginia; and this by the explicit and reiterated choice of the people of Virginia. The Puritan zealots of New England have for a hundred years borne the just censure of mankind for their religious intolerance,—their ungentle treatment of Baptists, Quakers, and witches. These pages are not to be stained by any apology for religious intolerance in New England. But in simple fairness we may not close our eyes to the factseldom mentioned and little known-that the jovial foxhunters of Virginia, the cant-despising cavaliers of the Old Dominion, were not a whit less guilty of religious intolerance. We are informed by Burk of the burning of witches 'Thomas, "Hist. Printing in Am.” I. 331. 2 Chalmers, "Political Annals," I. 345. in Virginia; and as to the molestation of men for their religious opinions, we are told by Campbell that so early as the year 1632 an act of the assembly of Virginia laid upon all who dissented from the Episcopal Church as there established "the penalty of the pains and forfeitures in that case appointed." Just thirty years later, the same assembly imposed a fine of two thousand pounds of tobacco on "schismatical persons" that would not have their children baptized; and on persons who attended other religious meetings than those of the established church, a penalty of two hundred pounds of tobacco for the first offence, of five hundred pounds of tobacco for the second offence, and of banishment for the third offence.2 Marriage was not tolerated under any other form than that of the Prayer Book. No one, unless a member of the established church, might instruct the young, even in a private family. Any shipmaster who should convey non-conformist passengers to Virginia was to be punished. Against Quakers as well as Baptists the severest laws were passed; and in 1664 large numbers of the former were prosecuted. Indeed, religious persecution remained rampant and flourishing in Virginia long after it had died of its own shame in New England. As late as 1741 penal laws were enacted in Virginia against Presbyterians and all other dissenters. late as 1746 the most savage penalties were denounced there against Moravians, New Lights, and Methodists.4 In the presence of this array of facts relating to the people of Virginia in its primal days, and to the social organization that they created there, is not the phenomenon of the comparative literary barrenness of Virginia fully ex 1 "Hist Va." 185. 2 Ibid. 258. 3 Ibid. 442. As Burk, "Hist. Va." III. 125. For other authorities upon early religious intolerance in Va., see Bancroft, "Hist. U. S." II. 190, 192, 201, 202; Beverley, "Hist. Va." ed. of 1855, 210, 212; R. R. Howison, "Hist. Va." I. 317-321; Hildreth, "Hist. U. S." I. 126, 336; W. C. Rives, "Life of Madison," I. 41-55; Writings of Washington, II. 481; Works of Jefferson, I. 38, 39, 174, VIII. 398–402. plained? How could literature have sprouted and thriven amid such conditions? Had much literature been produced there, would it not have been a miracle? The units of the community isolated; little chance for mind to kindle mind; no schools; no literary institutions high or low; no public libraries; no printing-press; no intellectual freedom; no religious freedom; the forces of society tending to create two great classes,-a class of vast landowners, haughty, hospitable, indolent, passionate, given to field-sports and politics, and a class of impoverished white plebeians and black serfs;-these constitute a situation out of which may be evolved country-gentlemen, loudlunged and jolly fox-hunters, militia heroes, men of boundless domestic heartiness and social grace, astute and imperious politicians, fiery orators, and by and by, here and there, some men of elegant literary culture, mostly acquired abroad; here and there, perhaps, after a while, a few amateur literary men; but no literary class, and almost no literature. CHAPTER V. NEW ENGLAND TRAITS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. I.-Transition from Virginia to New England-The race-qualities of the first New-Englanders-The period of their coming-Their numbers, and the multitude of their posterity. II. Two classes of Englishmen in the seventeenth century; those resting upon the world's attainments, those demanding a new departure-From the second class came the New-Englanders-The purpose of their coming an ideal one. III.—Their intellectuality—The large number of their learned men—Their esteem for learning. IV. Their earnestness of character-Religion the master-thought-Their conceptions of providence and of prayer-Their religious intensity leading to moroseness, to spiritual pedantry, to a jurisprudence based on theology, and to persecution. V.-The outward forms of New England life-Its prosperity-Literature in early New England-A literary class from the first-Circumstances favorable to literary action-The limits of their literary studies-Restraints upon the liberty of printing-Other disadvantages-The quality in them which gave assurance of literary development. I. JUST thirteen years after American civilization had established its first secure outpost upon the soil of Virginia, it succeeded in establishing a second outpost, four hundred miles northward, in that bleaker and more rugged portion of the continent which bears a name suggestive of tender and loyal memories-the name of New England. Thus, within so brief a period, were the beginnings made in the task of planting those two great colonial communities of English blood and speech, Virginia and New England, which, with many things in common, had still more |