By Rev. Henry Irving Cushman, D.D. ART. XIX. ETERNAL PUNISHMENT AND THE RESTO- PUBLISHED QUARTERLY-IN JANUARY, APRIL, JULY, AND OCTOBER. 1. OUR ANCESTORS-EARLY ENGLAND. Rev. G. H. Emerson, D.D. V. HINTS ON CHURCH MUSIC. Rev. Varnum Lincoln. 59 69 77 37 JAN 2 1889 LIBRARY UNIVERSALIST QUARTERLY AND GENERAL REVIEW. ARTICLE I. Our Ancestors-Early England. THAT the most instructive and useful history for the American people, after that of their own country, is the story of England, is a matter of course. The mother country must have for every people a preeminence over every other, the home annals alone excepted. We do not therefore argue, but assume, the proposition that our interest in the achievements of our English ancestors must be profound, and in a degree which cannot hold of any of the contemporary national experiences. Hengist and Horsa, Egbert and Alfred, Canute and Harold, and the first William are ours-the propinquity is hardly nearer the native-born Englishman than to the son of pure American parentage. We have said that English history takes precedence next after our own. In fact the two can hardly be separated; certainly American history at nearly every point not only touches but passes into the experiences of the older nationality. The Constitution of the United States was indeed framed about a century ago; in fact it is but a modification of the fundamental though unwritten law of the British realm, and both are outcomes of Magna Charta. There is indeed a close similarity 1 between the histories of all the European peoples; but between England and America the similarity in almost numberless important particulars becomes a strict identity. Two books by the late John Richard Green1 have somewhat recently appeared which enable us to trace both American and English life to its very springs in barbaric crudeness and simplicity. For cursory reading a table of logarithms would have hardly less interest. Slowly and attentively studied they yield successive surprises and continual delight. They are of the class of books the great Bacon described as neither to be "tasted" nor "swallowed," but "chewed." Not many years ago a newspaper paragraph told that a boy of five years stepped with dry feet across the Mississippi. This was at the fountain where the remotest stream starts. It is in the limitations of the situation that, in most cases, history shades into tradition and myth. Save in respect to colonizations, the historic fountain is inaccessible. Students during the last half century have sought it with a zeal and perseverance akin to that with which navigators have worked their explorations towards the poles. Grote has brought us very near the spot in space, and the point in time, whence starts the wonderful career of the Greeks. Niebuhr has rendered a similar service for Rome. Green, in his "Making of England," has taken us almost in sight of the initial act—the spring whence issues the stream alike of British and American nationality. It is our purpose in this article to note, in terms very general, a few of the threads which, woven into a single cord, exhibit an England substantially made, though by no means perfected, threads by which the American and the Englishman of to-day may trace their way back to their earlier ancestors; and Mr. Green's latest volumes at once give us the clue and supply the materials. At the outset we are impelled to pay tribute to a soul sublimely heroic and unselfish. The last of his books is posthumous; and the world is indebted to Mrs. Green, the widow, whose consecrated devotion to her husband's incomplete labors, 1I. The Making of England. II. The Conquest of England. By John Richard Green, M. A. LL.D. New York: Harper & Brothers. The Making" appeared in 1882; the "Conquest" in 1884. 66 |