the good cause. Some, at length, driven by conscientious convictions, and unwilling to be partakers longer in its enormities, stung also by the cruel excesses of magisterial power, openly disclaimed the National Establishment, and became a separate sect,- first under the name of Brownists, from the person who had led in this new organization; and then under the better name of Separatists. I like this word, sir. It has a meaning. After long struggles in Parliament and out of it, in Church and State, continued through successive reigns, the Puritans finally triumphed; and the despised sect of Separatists, swollen in numbers, and now under the denomination of Independents, with Oliver Cromwell at their head, and John Milton as his secretary, ruled England. Thus is prefigured the final triumph of all, however few in numbers, who sincerely devote themselves to truth.

The Pilgrims of Plymouth were among the earliest of the Separatists. As such, they knew by bitter experience all the sharpness of persecution. Against them the men in power raged like the heathen. Against them the whole fury of the law was directed. Some were imprisoned; all were impoverished; while their name became a by-word of reproach. For safety and freedom, the little band first sought shelter in Holland, where they continued in indigence and obscurity for more than ten years; when they were inspired to seek a home in this unknown Western world. Such, in brief, is their history. I could not say more of it without intruding upon your time: I could not say less without injustice to them. Rarely have austere principles been expressed with more gentleness than from their lips. By a covenant with the Lord, they had vowed to walk in all his ways, according to their best endeavors, whatsoever it should cost them; and also to receive whatsoever truth should be made known from the written word of God. Repentance and prayers, patience and tears, were their weapons. "It is not with us," said they, "as with other men, whom small things can discourage, or small discontentments cause to wish themselves at home again." And then, again, on another occasion, their souls were lifted to utterance like this: "When we are in our graves, it will be all one whether we have lived in plenty or penury; whether we have died in a bed of down, or on locks of straw." Self-sacrifice is never in vain; and they foresaw with the clearness of prophecy, that out of their trials should come a transcendent future. "As one small candle," said an early Pilgrim governor, "may light a thousand, so the light kindled here may in some sort shine even to the whole nation."

And yet these men, with such sublime endurance and such lofty faith, are among those who are sometimes called "Puritan knaves" and "knaves-Puritans," and who were branded by King James as the " 'very pests in the Church and Commonwealth."

The small company of our forefathers became the jest and gibe of fashion and power. The phrase, "men of one idea," had not been invented then; but, in equivalent language, they were styled "the pinched fanatics of Leyden." A contemporary poet, and favorite of Charles the First, Thomas Carew, lent his genius to their defamation. A mask, from his elegant and careful pen, was performed by the monarch and his courtiers, wherein the whole plantation of New England was turned to royal sport. The jeer broke forth in the exclamation, that it had "purged more virulent humors from the politic bodies than guaiacum and all the WestIndian drugs from the natural bodies of the kingdom."

And these outcasts, despised in their own day by the proud and great, are the men whom we have met in this goodly number to celebrate, not for any victory of war; not for any triumph of discovery, science, learning, or eloquence; not for worldly success of any kind. How poor are all these things by the side of that divine virtue which made them, amidst the reproach, the obloquy, and the hardness of the world, hold fast to freedom and truth! Sir, if the honors of this day are not a mockery; if they do not expend themselves in mere selfish gratulation; if they are a sincere homage to the character of the Pilgrims (and I can not suppose otherwise), then is it well for us to be here. Standing on Plymouth Rock at their great anniversary, we can not fail to be elevated by their example. We see clearly what it has done for the world, and what it has done for their fame. No pusillanimous soul here to-day will declare their self-sacrifice, their deviation from received opinions, their unquenchable thirst for liberty, an error or illusion. From gushing multitudinous hearts we now thank these lowly men that they dared to be true and brave. Conformity or compromise might, perhaps, have purchased for them a profitable peace, but not peace of mind; it might have secured place and power, but not repose; it might have opened a present shelter, but not a home in history and in men's hearts till time shall be no more. All will confess the true grandeur of their example, while, in vindication of a cherished principle, they stood alone, against the madness of men, against the law of the land, against their king. Better be the despised Pilgrim, a fugitive for freedom, than the halting politician, forgetful of principle, "with a senate at his heels."

Such, sir, is the voice from Plymouth Rock as it salutes my Others may not hear it; but to me it comes in tones which can not mistake. I catch its words of noble cheer:

ears.

-

"New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth.
They must upward still and onward who would keep abreast of Truth:
Lo! before us gleam her camp-fires. We ourselves must Pilgrims be,
Launch our Mayflower,' and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea."
Speech at the Plymouth Festival, August, 1853.

EXPENSES OF WAR AND EDUCATION COMPARED.

Ir appears from the last report of the treasurer of Harvard University, that its whole available property- the various accumulations of more than two centuries of generosity — amounts to $703,175.

There now swings idly at her moorings in this harbor a ship of the line, "The Ohio," carrying ninety guns, finished as late as 1836, for $547,888; repaired only two years afterwards, in 1838, for $223,012; with an armament which has cost $53,945; making an amount of $834,845 as the actual cost at this moment of that single ship, more than $100,000 beyond all the available accumulations of the richest and most ancient seat of learning in the land! Choose ye, my fellow-citizens of a Christian State, between the two caskets, that wherein is the loveliness of knowledge and truth, or that which contains the carrion death.

Still further let us pursue the comparison. The pay of the captain of a ship like "The Ohio" is $4,500 when in service; $3,500 when on leave of absence, or off duty. The salary of the president of Harvard University is $2,205, without leave of absence, and never being off duty.

If the large endowments of Harvard University are dwarfed by a comparison with the expense of a single ship of the line, how much more must it be so with those of other institutions of learning and beneficence less favored by the bounty of many generations! The average cost of a sloop of war is $315,000; more, probably, than all the endowments of those twin-stars of learning in the western part of Massachusetts, - the colleges at Williamstown and Amherst; and of that single star in the east, the guide to many ingenuous youth, the seminary at Andover. The yearly cost of a sloop of war in service is above $50,000; more than the annual expenditures of these three institutions combined.

Take all the institutions of learning and beneficence,— the precious jewels of the Commonwealth, the schools, colleges, hospitals, and asylums, and the sums by which they have been purchased and preserved are trivial and beggarly compared with the treasures squandered within the borders of Massachusetts in vain preparations for war. There is the navy-yard at Charlestown, with its stores on hand, all costing $4,741,000; the fortifications in the harbors of Massachusetts, in which have been sunk already incalculable sums, and in which it is now proposed to sink $3,853,000 more; and, besides, the arsenal at Springfield, containing, in 1842, 175,118 muskets, valued at $2,999,998, and which is fed by an annual appropriation of about $200,000, but whose highest value will ever be, in the judgment of all lovers of

truth, that it inspired a poem, which in its influence shall be mightier than a battle, and shall endure when arsenals and fortifications have crumbled to the earth.

JUDICIAL TRIBUNALS.

LET me here say, that I hold judges, and especially the Supreme Court of the country, in much respect; but I am too familiar with the history of judicial proceedings to regard them with any superstitious reverence. Judges are but men, and, in all ages, have shown a full share of human frailty. Alas, alas! the worst crimes of history have been perpetrated under their sanction. The blood of martyrs and of patriots, crying from the ground, summons them to judgment. It was a judicial tribunal which condemned Socrates to drink the fatal hemlock, and which pushed the Saviour barefoot over the pavements of Jerusalem, bending beneath his cross. It was a judicial tribunal, which, against the testimony and entreaties of her father, surrendered the fair Virginia as a slave; which arrested the teachings of the great apostle to the Gentiles, and sent him in bonds from Judæa to Rome; which, in the name of the old religion, adjudged the saints and fathers of the Christian Church to death in all its most dreadful forms; and which afterwards, in the name of the new religion, enforced the tortures of the Inquisition amidst the shrieks and agonies of its victims, while it compelled Galileo to declare, in solemn denial of the great truth he had disclosed, that the earth did not move round the sun. It was a judicial tribunal, which in France, during the long reign of her monarchs, lent itself to be the instrument of every tyranny, as, during the brief Reign of Terror, it did not hesitate to stand forth the unpitying accessory of the unpitying guillotine. Ay, sir, it was a judicial tribunal in England, surrounded by all the forms of law, which sanctioned every despotic caprice of Henry the Eighth, from the unjust divorce of his queen to the beheading of Sir Thomas More; which lighted the fires of persecution that glowed at Oxford and Smithfield over the cinders of Latimer, Ridley, and John Rogers; which, after elaborate argument, upheld the fatal tyranny of shipmoney against the patriot resistance of Hampden; which, in defiance of justice and humanity, sent Sidney and Russell to the block; which persistently enforced the laws of conformity that our Puritan Fathers persistently refused to obey; and which afterwards, with Jeffries on the bench, crimsoned the pages of English history with massacre and murder, - even with the blood of innocent woman. Ay, sir, and it was a judicial tribunal in our

country, surrounded by all the forms of law, which hung witches at Salem; which affirmed the constitutionality of the Stamp Act, while it admonished "jurors and the people" to obey; and which now, in our day, has lent its sanction to the unutterable atrocity of the Fugitive-slave Bill.

Speech at Worcester, September, 1854.

EDWARD EVERETT.

1794-1866.

This distinguished scholar, orator, and statesman was born in Dorchester, Mass. Of a wonderful memory, he committed all his rhetorically faultless orations and speeches, and declaimed them with the most studied precision of gesture. Whatever the subject or occasion, we find the same grace and elegance of manner in style and speech. From the third volume of his works we make two selections.

DUDLEY OBSERVATORY, ALBANY, 1856.

WE derive from the observations of the heavenly bodies which are made at an observatory our only adequate measures of time, and our only means of comparing the time of one place with the time of another. Our artificial timekeepers, clocks, watches, and chronometers, however ingeniously contrived and admirably fabricated, are but a transcript, so to say, of the celestial motions, and would be of no value without the means of regulating them by observation. It is impossible for them, under any circumstances, to escape the imperfection of all machinery, the work of human hands; and, the moment we remove with our timekeeper east or west, it fails us. It will keep home-time alone, like the fond traveler who leaves his heart behind him. The artificial instrument is of incalculable utility, but must itself be regulated by the eternal clockwork of the skies.

This single consideration is sufficient to show how completely the daily business of life is affected and controlled by the heavenly bodies. It is they, and not our main-springs, our expansionbalances, and our compensation-pendulums, which give us our time. To reverse the line of Pope,

"'Tis with our watches as our judgments: none

Go just alike; yet each believes his own."

But for all the kindreds and tribes and tongues of men, - each upon their own meridian, — from the arctic pole to the equator,