n the hill
by the field of Dreux, her veteran bands of pikemen, dark masses of
organized ferocity, stood biding their time while the battle surged
below, and then swept downward to the slaughter,--so did Spain watch and
wait to trample and crush the hope of humanity.

In these days of fear, a second Huguenot colony sailed for the New
World. The calm, stern man who represented and led the Protestantism
of France felt to his inmost heart the peril of the time. He would
fain build up a city of refuge for the persecuted sect. Yet Gaspar de
Coligny, too high in power and rank to be openly assailed, was forced
to act with caution. He must act, too, in the name of the Crown, and
in virtue of his office of Admiral of France. A nobleman and a
soldier,--for the Admiral of France was no seaman,--he shared the ideas
and habits of his class; nor is there reason to believe him to have been
in advance of his time in a knowledge of the principles of successful
colonization. His scheme promised a military colony, not a free
commonwealth. The Huguenot party was already a political as well as
a religious party. At its foundation lay the religious element,
represented by Geneva, the martyrs, and the devoted fugitives who
sang the psalms of Marot among rocks and caverns. Joined to these were
numbers on whom the faith sat lightly, whose hope was in commotion and
change. Of the latter, in great part, was the Huguenot noblesse, from
Conde, who aspired to the crown,

"Ce petit homme tant joli,
Qui toujours chante, toujours rit,"

to the younger son of the impoverished seigneur whose patrimony was his
sword. More than this, the restless, the factious, and the discontented,
began to link their fortunes to a party whose triumph would involve
confiscation of the wealth of the only rich class in France. An element
of the great revolution was already mingling in the strife of religions.

America was still a land of wonder. The ancient spell still hung
unbroken over the wild, vast world of mystery beyond the sea,--a land of
romance, adventure, and gold.

Fifty-eight years later the Puritans landed on the sands of
Massachusetts Bay. The illusion was gone,--the ignis fatuus of
adventure, the dream of wealth. The rugged wilderness offered only a
stern and hard won independence. In their own hearts, and not in
the promptings of a great leader or the patronage of an equivocal
government, their enterprise found its birth and its achievement.