ade up their minds not to "locate";
packed up barbiton and phorminx, mask and cothurn, took the first ship
bound to Europe, and quietly sailed away. Their stay was short, but they
left their mark. To this day Phoebes are numerous in Connecticut, and
nine women to one man has become the customary proportion of the sexes.
As Greece had Parnassus, Helicon, and Pindus, Connecticut had New Haven,
Hartford, and Litchfield Hill,--halting-places of the illustrious
travellers. There they scattered the seeds of poetry,--seeds which fell
upon stony places, but, warmed by the genial influence of the Sun-God,
sprang up and brought forth such fruit as we shall see.

John Trumbull was born in Watertown, A.D. 1750; two years later, in
Northampton, came Timothy Dwight: both of the best New England breed:
Dwight, a grandson of Jonathan Edwards; Trumbull, cousin to kind old
Governor Trumbull, (whose pompous manner in transacting the most
trifling public business amused Chastellux and the Hussar officers at
Windham,) and consequently second cousin to the son of the Governor,
Colonel John Trumbull, whose paintings might possibly have added to the
amusement of the gay Frenchmen, had they stayed in America long enough
to see them. Cowley, Milton, and Pope lisped in numbers; but the
precocity of Trumbull was even more surprising. He passed his college
examination at the age of eight, in the lap of a Dr. Emmons; but was
remanded to the nursery to give his stature time to catch up with his
acquirements. Dwight, too, was ready for college at eight, and was
actually entered at thirteen.

About this time there were symptoms of an aesthetical thaw in
Connecticut. There had been no such word as play in the dictionary of
the New-Englanders. They worked hard on their stony soil, and read hard
in their stony books of doctrine. That stimulant to the mind, outside of
daily routine, which the human race must have under all circumstances,
(we call it excitement nowadays,) was found by the better sort in
theological quarrels, by the baser in New England rum,--the two things
most cheering to the spirit of man, if Byron is to be believed.
Education meant solid learning,--that is to say, studies bearing upon
divinity, law, medicine, or merchandise; and to peruse works of the
imagination was considered an idle waste of time,--indeed, as partaking
somewhat of the nature of sin. But the growing taste of Connecticut was
no longer satisfied with Dr. Watts's moral l