ve play. The Reformation of
Luther broke out, kindling up the minds of men afresh, leading to new
habits of thought, and awakening in individuals energies before unknown
even to themselves. The religious controversies of this period changed
society, as well as religion; indeed, it would be easy to prove, if this
occasion were proper for it, that they changed society to a considerable
extent, where they did not change the religion of the state. They
changed man himself, in his modes of thought, his consciousness of his
own powers, and his desire of intellectual attainment. The spirit of
commercial and foreign adventure, therefore, on the one hand, which had
gained so much strength and influence since the time of the discovery of
America, and, on the other, the assertion and maintenance of religious
liberty, having their source indeed in the Reformation, but continued,
diversified, and constantly strengthened by the subsequent divisions of
sentiment and opinion among the Reformers themselves, and this love of
religious liberty drawing after it, or bringing along with it, as it
always does, an ardent devotion to the principle of civil liberty also,
were the powerful influences under which character was formed, and men
trained, for the great work of introducing English civilization, English
law, and, what is more than all, Anglo-Saxon blood, into the wilderness
of North America. Raleigh and his companions may be considered as the
creatures, principally, of the first of these causes. High-spirited,
full of the love of personal adventure, excited, too, in some degree, by
the hopes of sudden riches from the discovery of mines of the precious
metals, and not unwilling to diversify the labors of settling a colony
with occasional cruising against the Spaniards in the West Indian seas,
they crossed and recrossed the ocean, with a frequency which surprises
us, when we consider the state of navigation, and which evinces a most
daring spirit.

The other cause peopled New England. The Mayflower sought our shores
under no high-wrought spirit of commercial adventure, no love of gold,
no mixture of purpose warlike or hostile to any human being. Like the
dove from the ark, she had put forth only to find rest. Solemn
supplications on the shore of the sea, in Holland, had invoked for her,
at her departure, the blessings of Providence. The stars which guided
her were the unobscured constellations of civil and religious liberty.
Her deck was