as, probably, an attempt rather to fly from
oppression, than to establish religious freedom. The first English
settlement, also, was founded more upon speculation than on any novel or
exalted principle. There was a quest of gold, a desire for land, and an
honest hope of improving personal fortunes.

VIRGINIA had been a charter government, but, in 1624, it was merged in
the Royal Government. The crown reassumed the dominion it had granted to
others. Virginia, in the first two decades of the seventeenth century,
although exhibiting some prosperous phases, was nothing more than a
delicate off-shoot from the British stock, somewhat vigorous for its
change to virgin soil, but likely to bear the same fruit as its parent
tree. Virginia was a limb timidly transplanted,--not a branch torn off,
and flung to wither or to fertilize new realms by its decay. This
continent, with all that a century and a half of maritime coasting had
done for it, was but thinly sprinkled with settlements, which bore the
same proportion to the vast continental wilderness that single ships or
small squadrons bear to the illimitable sea. But the spirit of
adventure, the desire for refuge, the dream of liberty, were soon to
plant the seeds of a new civilization in the Western World.

* * * * *

Henry VIII, Founder of the English Church, as he had, whilom, been,
Defender of the Roman Faith, was no friend of toleration; but the rigor
of his system was somewhat relaxed during the reign of the sixth Edward.
Mary, daughter of Henry, and sister of Edward, re-constructed the great
ancestral church, and the world is hardly divided in opinion as to the
character of her reign. Elizabeth re-established the church that had
been founded by her father; and her successor James I of England and VI
of Scotland,--the Protestant son of a Catholic mother,--while he openly
adhered to the church of his realm, could not avoid some exhibitions of
coquettish tenderness for the faith of his slaughtered parent.

But, amid all these changes, there was one class upon which the wrath of
the Church of England and of the Church of Rome, met in accordant
severity;--this was the Puritan and ultra Puritan sect,--to which I have
alluded at the commencement of this discourse,--whose lot was even more
disastrous under the Protestant Elizabeth, than under the Catholic Mary.
The remorseless courts of her commissioners, who inquisitorially tried
these religionis