sented as gloomy,
superstitious, severe, irrational, and of a licentious tendency. But when
other systems shall have produced a piety as devoted, a morality as pure,
a patriotism as disinterested, and a state of society as happy, as have
prevailed where their doctrines have been most prevalent, it may be in
season to seek an answer to this objection.

The persecutions instituted by our fathers have been the occasion of
ceaseless obloquy upon their fair fame. And truly, it was a fault of no
ordinary magnitude, that sometimes they did persecute. But let him whose
ancestors were not ten times more guilty, cast the first stone, and the
ashes of our fathers will no more be disturbed. Theirs was the fault of
the age, and it will be easy to show that no class of men had, at that
time, approximated so nearly to just apprehensions of religious liberty;
and that it is to them that the world is now indebted for the more just
and definite views which now prevail.

The superstition and bigotry of our fathers are themes on which some of
their descendants, themselves far enough from superstition, if not from
bigotry, have delighted to dwell. But when we look abroad, and behold the
condition of the world, compared with the condition of New England, we may
justly exclaim, "Would to God that the ancestors of all the nations had
been not only almost, but altogether such bigots as our fathers were."

XXIV. SHORT SELECTIONS IN PROSE. (130)

I. DRYDEN AND POPE.

Dryden knew more of man in his general nature, and Pope in his local
manners. The notions of Dryden were formed by comprehensive speculation,
those of Pope by minute attention. There is more dignity in the knowledge
of Dryden, more certainty in that of Pope. The style of Dryden is
capricious and varied, that of Pope cautious and uniform. Dryden obeys the
motions of his own mind; Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of
composition. Dryden's page is a natural field, rising into inequalities,
and diversified by the varied exuberance of abundant vegetation; Pope's is
the velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and leveled by the roller. If the
flights of Dryden are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If, of
Dryden's fire, the blaze is brighter, of Pope's the heat is more regular
and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls
below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with
perpetual delight.