y argument was the sword, and whose only
paradise was a brothel. No Gothic scourge of God, no Vandal pest of
nations, no fabled fugitive from the flames of Troy, no bastard
Norman tyrant, appears among the list of worthies who first landed
on the rock, which your veneration has preserved as a lasting
monument of their achievement. The great actors of the day we now
solemnize were illustrious by their intrepid valor no less than by
their Christian graces, but the clarion of conquest has not blazoned
forth their names to all the winds of heaven. Their glory has not
been wafted over oceans of blood to the remotest regions of the
earth. They have not erected to themselves colossal statues upon
pedestals of human bones, to provoke and insult the tardy hand of
heavenly retribution. But theirs was "the better fortitude of
patience and heroic martyrdom." Theirs was the gentle temper of
Christian kindness; the rigorous observance of reciprocal justice;
the unconquerable soul of conscious integrity. Worldly fame has
been parsimonious of her favor to the memory of those generous
companions. Their numbers were small; their stations in life
obscure; the object of their enterprise unostentatious; the theatre
of their exploits remote; how could they possibly be favorites of
worldly Fame--that common crier, whose existence is only known by
the assemblage of multitudes; that pander of wealth and greatness,
so eager to haunt the palaces of fortune, and so fastidious to the
houseless dignity of virtue; that parasite of pride, ever scornful
to meekness, and ever obsequious to insolent power; that heedless
trumpeter, whose ears are deaf to modest merit, and whose eyes are
blind to bloodless, distant excellence?

When the persecuted companions of Robinson, exiles from their native
land, anxiously sued for the privilege of removing a thousand
leagues more distant to an untried soil, a rigorous climate, and a
savage wilderness, for the sake of reconciling their sense of
religious duty with their affections for their country, few, perhaps
none of them, formed a conception of what would be, within two
centuries, the result of their undertaking. When the jealous and
niggardly policy of their British sovereign denied them even that
humblest of requests, and instead of liberty would barely consent to
promise connivance, neither he nor they might be aware that they
were laying the foundations of a power, and that he was sowing the
seeds o