ery
must almost inevitably lead to. Literature, that solace of the refined
and luxurious in the European world, was but imperfectly cultivated;
nor was religion, in its stern and lofty developments, the animating
principle of life, as in the New England settlements. But the people
of Virginia were richer, more cultivated, and more aristocratic than
the Puritans, more refined in manners, and more pleasing as
companions.

[Sidenote: Settlement of New England.]

The settlements in New England were made by a very different class of
men from those who colonized Virginia. They were not adventurers in
quest of gain; they were not broken-down gentlemen of aristocratic
connections; they were not the profligate and dissolute members of
powerful families. They were Puritans, they belonged to the middle
ranks of society; they were men of stern and lofty virtue, of
invincible energy, and hard and iron wills; they detested both the
civil and religious despotism of their times, and desired, above all
worldly consideration, the liberty of worshipping God according to the
dictates of their consciences. They were chiefly Independents and
Calvinists, among whom religion was a life, and not a dogma. They
sought savage wilds, not for gain, not for ease, not for
aggrandizement, but for liberty of conscience; and, for the sake of
that inestimable privilege, they were ready to forego all the comforts
and elegances of civilized life, and cheerfully meet all the dangers
and make all the sacrifices which a residence among savage Indians,
and in a cold and inhospitable climate, necessarily incurred.

The efforts at colonization attempted by the company in the west of
England, to which allusion has been made, signally failed. God did not
design that New England should be settled by a band of commercial
adventurers. A colony was permanently planted at Plymouth, within the
limits of the corporation, of forty persons, to whom James had granted
enormous powers, and a belt of country from the fortieth to the
forty-eighth degree of north latitude in width, and from the Atlantic
to the Pacific in length.

[Sidenote: Arrival of the Mayflower.]

On the 5th of August, 1620, the Mayflower and the Speedwell, freighted
with the first Puritan colony, set sail from Southampton. It composed
a band of religious and devoted men, with their wives and children,
who had previously sought shelter in Holland for the enjoyment of
their religious opinions. The small