Colony, Dr. Palfrey says: "In the thirteenth year of the settlement, a penal provision had to be adopted, to protect the public weal against the prevailing absence of ambition for public office; and 'it was enacted, by public consent of the freemen of this society of New Plymouth, that if now or hereafter any one were elected to the office of Governor, and would not stand to the election, nor hold and execute the office of his year, that then he be amerced in twenty pounds sterling fine. It was further ordered and decreed, that if any were elected to the office of council, and refused to hold the place, that then he be amerced in ten pounds sterling fine, and in case refused to be paid, to be forthwith levied.' At his urgent request, Bradford was now for the first time excused from the office of Governor, and Edward Winslow was chosen his successor, Bradford taking his place as one of the Assistants." (I. 341.)

Another lesson, alike honorable to the genuine and unambitious patriotism and integrity of the Puritans, and admonitory to the times that be, might be derived from the account in the early history of Massachusetts, when Gov. Winthrop, at the close of the gubernatorial year, was unexpectedly, if not uncivilly pressed by some extra-vigilants, to give an account of his pecuniary stewardship. Like the truly great man he was, and equally free from pettishness and scorn and fear, he quietly gave the account, when, behold, he had disbursed, for the public service, about a thousand pounds more than he had received, but of which he was going to say nothing if he had not been thus called to account. Now, however, that his posterity might not be ashamed of him, he required that a notice of the result should accompany the record of the investigation.

As an "all-important consequence of the meeting of the Long Parliament," in 1640, which led the way to the Commonwealth, Dr. Palfrey remarks that it put a final stop to emigration to this country. Winthrop remarks: "The Parliament of England setting upon a general reformation both of church and state, the Earl of Strafford being beheaded, and the Archbishop, our great enemy, and many others of the

great officers and judges, bishops and others, imprisoned and called to account, this caused all men to stay in England, in expectation of a new world." Dr. Palfrey adds: "At the end of ten years from Winthrop's arrival, about twenty-one thousand Englishmen, or four thousand families, including the few hundreds who were here before him, had come over, in three hundred vessels, at a cost of two hundred thousand pounds sterling. During the century and a quarter that passed between that time and the publication of the first volume of Hutchinson's History, it is believed that 'more had gone from hence to England, than had come from thence hither;' nor did anything that can be called an immigration occur again till after Boston was two hundred years old," in 1830. (pp. 584, 585.) Of course it is chiefly from these twenty-one thousand that have, since 1640, sprung up in New England and elsewhere, so many as the stars of heaven for multitude" the Universal Yankee Nation"—and mostly bearing the general stamp (however distorted in too many cases) of their enterprising and religious progenitors. Probably the like fecundity and the like similarity in character and language is not elsewhere to be found in the modern annals of emigration.

Dr. Palfrey says, in the preface to his first volume: "I am to tell the early history of a vast tribe of men, numbering at the present time, it is likely, some seven or eight millions." And he thinks our present white population may be divided pretty accurately into three equal parts; one belonging to the New England stock; one the posterity of English who settled in other Atlantic colonies; and one the Irish, Scotch, French, Spanish, German, and other immigrants, and their descendants. And he presumes there is one third part of our whole nation, "of whom no individual could peruse this volume without reading the history of his own progenitors." This our author thinks is about as near the truth as we can come in so complicated a problem; and so do we. But it must be obvious, on a little reflection, that many who are "of the New England stock," i. e., descendants of English emigrants to New England, are at the same time descendVOL. XVIII. No. 69.

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ants of Scotch, French, or Irish immigrants, or even of all four classes. We know a boy in Massachusetts who has Italian, French, Dutch, Irish, and American blood in his veins, though two of the tinctures were imparted in Europe. We presume all the descendants of the Scotch-Irish who settled Londonderry, N. H., are now also descendants of the English immigrants; and that the like will be the fact with the New York Dutchmen, within the lapse of three generations; and with the Pennsylvania Dutchmen in twice that time. And if our Irish are more clannish, and may not amalgamate quite so soon with the other races, we may yet believe that, among the millions in the free states who may be pondering our author's pages, five generations hence, scarcely an individual from either of the old stocks will be found who will not here be reading the history of a portion of his own progenitors—such is the increasing rapidity with which the Puritan race are now pervading the whole North, and who may soon be pervading the South of our land, and thus conspiring the more rapidly to make it the most homogeneous and enlightened and religious of all the great nations of Christendom. Every such book as this must add a fresh impetus towards so grand an event.

ARTICLE VI.

NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

CAPITO AND BUCER, the Reformers of Strasburg, delineated from their manuscript letters, their printed works, and other contemporary authorities. By J. W. Baum, Professor in the Protestant Seminary of Strasburg. Elberfeld, 1860.1

THE free city of Strasburg, situated on that part of the Rhine which had long been the centre of religious influence, acted a most important part in the great religious revolution of the sixteenth century. Its political importance, and its close connection with Switzerland, France, and Holland, gave

1 Capito und Butzer, Strassburgs Reformatoren, nach ihrem handschriftlichen Briefschatze, ihren gedruckten Schriften und anderen gleichzeitigen Quellen, dargestellt von J. W. Baum.

the more weight to its example. From the beginning it took a prompt, decided, and yet moderate, course of action, which it has continued to maintain for more than three centuries. Though it is no longer the standardbearer of the free cities of Germany, but holds a humiliating position as an unimportant city of the French Empire, its German character and native language being barely tolerated, it has not yet lost its significance in the literary world. In its seminary and among its clergy there are, and always have been, men known throughout Christendom for their eminent scholarship. At the head of the list of great men that gave distinction to this ancient city, at the time of the Reformation, stand the names of Capito and Bucer. Of the laity, there were several noble and independent characters, who, as magistrates and statesmen, were worthy coadjutors of the reformers. Such men were Pfarrer, Kniebs, and Herlin. But, towering above all the rest, was Jacob Sturm, the lustre of whose character outlives the period to which he belonged. To these men, both of the clergy and laity, all Protestant Europe is indebted for their invaluable service in the cause of learning and religion.

Capito descended from a respectable burgher family of Hagenau, then the first of the ten free towns of Alsace. He was born in 1478. His father, who was averse to the priests and monks of his day, on account of their loose morals, designed his son for the medical profession, and sent him, accordingly, to Pfortzheim, the residence of Reuchlin, to prepare for the university. Why he did not send him to Dringenberg, who, at Schlettstadt, near by, kept one of the best Latin schools of that day, is not known. The school at Pfortzheim, at that time, seems to have felt but slightly the influence of Reuchlin. Students still led a strolling life, like gypsies. Only the teachers possessed books; and the most they did by way of instruction was to dictate lessons from these for their pupils. Possibly Simler, afterwards the teacher of Melanchthon, gave instructions to Capito. Certainly the latter made rapid progress; for he soon proceeded to the university of Freiburg to study medicine, and received his degree in 1498, in his twentieth year. When we consider what the state of medical science then was, how little knowledge there was, how much quackery and mysticism, we cannot wonder that a youth of Capito's clear, conscientious, and contemplative mind, should turn to other studies. Attracted to the study of law by such men as Xasius of Freiburg, Peutinger of Augsburg, and Pirkheimer of Nürenburg, the three great lights of jurisprudence in the south of Germany, he studied the legal science under the first of these, and took his degree accordingly. There were, at that time, in most places, associations of men for the promotion of ancient learning, following the lead of Reuchlin, Erasmus, and others. To one of these did Capito belong; and he made such progress that he was early made dean of the faculty of arts. These young men became eminent at a later period, some as champions, and others as enemies of reform. One of them was Zell, who, after being teacher at Freiburg, became the father of the Reformation in Strasburg. Another

was Eck, afterwards the celebrated polemic theologian of Ingoldstadt, and the opponent of Luther. A third was Jacob Sturm, who, after studying theology, became a distinguished jurist, and one of the greatest and best men of Strasburg. A fourth was Faber, afterwards bishop of Constance, and the mischievous but influential adviser of Ferdinand. Another was the distinguished poet, Urban Rhegius, who finally espoused most heartily the cause of the Reformation in Augsburg and in Celle. Capito, a short time after he was made dean, was, in 1511, made licenciate in theology, and began to give lectures in that department in the university. At this time, he became acquainted with the scholastic theologians, and with the Church Fathers, the latter of which, together with the study of the Greek Testament, led him to sounder views of theology.

Hardly a year had passed before the bishop of Spire, wishing a chaplain for a college of nobles of the Benedictine order, appointed Capito to this place. Soon after his settlement here, he was visited by a person of meagre form, almost concealed in a monk's hood, who turned out to be Pellican, an old friend of his from Basle, who came thither to attend a meeting of his order. In confidential intercourse, it was, for the first time, ascertained that both rejected the church doctrine of transubstantiation. This meeting took place five years before Luther published his Theses, and a week before he was made doctor of theology, and took the oath to teach according to the scriptures. In the next year, 1513, Capito, who, as a jurist, had been often employed in managing the affairs of the wealthy canons- -the sons of nobles-under his spiritual charge, was called to sit in a council of theologians and jurists, to decide upon the celebrated case of Reuchlin, who was accused of heresy by Hogstraten, for studying the Rabbinical writings in Hebrew. In this contest between learning and ignorance, Capito, himself a linguist and a good Hebraist, was, of course, on the right side; and he contributed his share towards the final decision enjoining perpetual silence upon the accuser and the payment of the costs of the trial.

At this time there was, at Basle, a bishop by the name of Utenheim, who, in attempting to reform certain abuses in the church, was opposed by his clergy. He was supported, however, in his endeavors to enlighten the people by the influence of Frobenius, the learned and celebrated printer of Basle, and of Erasmus, then engaged in that place in preparing his edition and Latin version of the Greek Testament. In looking around for a suitable person to instruct his clergy, he fixed upon Capito, and at once appointed him preacher in the cathedral. Thus, after three years' residence in Bruchsal, in the service of the bishop of Spire, he removed to Basle, and formed an intimacy with Erasmus, whom he aided in the preparation of his version of the Greek Testament, especially in respect to the names and words borrowed from the Hebrew. Erasmus said that he had merely made a beginning in removing ignorance and superstition by opening the scriptures; that others must complete the work which he had begun; and called upon Capito in particular, who was familiar with both Hebrew and Greek,