as the
heart and the brain of New England. She has had (so she has believed)
the heart to feel a moral principle and the head to accept a great
thought. She has had brave-hearted men and clear-eyed women. Once--let
us make a brief retrospect--she had "pilgrim fathers." She had what she
and the world too thought a religion, which she believed in. She had a
people of sound English stock, who in this clear New England air grew
to hate squalor, vice, beggary, debt, and damnation. Once, fifty years
ago, she had no great cities; her "Hub," Boston, in 1830 had but the
poor population of 61,392, nearly all born on her soil, few of them
dirty or beggared. Once, fifty years ago, all through Massachusetts
were clean, decent, white-housed towns, such as Worcester, and
Springfield, and Northampton, and Concord, and Salem, and Newburyport,
centres of small but most cultivated and earnest social life.

Then small farms were cultivated by families of New England birth, out
of whom came able men and handsome women. Children lived with parents,
and did not tyrannize them. Silk gowns were rare, and pianos unknown;
"art" and "culture" had not become household words, but butter was made
at home, and the mystery of bread was known to ladies. Few then had
been to Paris, and few therefore knew how vulgar they were. But "where
ignorance is bliss," etc. They got on, and did not know what poor
creatures they were.

Every child was expected to learn the three R's at the little red
school-house, and to _perfect_ his education by taking hold of material
nature with his hands, and learning what it was by mastering it. That
was education. The parson knew a little Latin, and he was all. They
thought this worked well. Lamentable indeed!

The man expected to marry a capable wife, and to bring up children; he
expected to work on his land or in his shop, to dress decently in
clothes which his wife had made, securing a reasonable support in this
world by his own labor, not by _hocus-pocus_; he provided for his
future salvation by imbibing the five points of Calvin through
fifty-four sermons a year, with now and then a Thursday lecture to fill
in the cracks. Thus he was sure of his food here and of salvation
hereafter--through the merciful providence of God, and not his own
righteousness. New England thus produced a breed of people unlike and
they fancied not inferior to any that history tells of.

But it would not do. There was no progress--it was a lam