guided by the hand of God, planted his future abode on the
shores of New England, a land truly congenial to him, whose whole mental
and physical life had hitherto been one of storm and tempest. Nor could
a fitter type in the human race have been found than he to tame the
rock-crowned hills, to brave the rigors of such winters as Old England
never knew, and the lurking dangers at the hands of a powerful and
jealous race. Here was no place for indolence and luxurious ease. Only
by the most persevering and painful labors could the bleak hills and
gorge-like valleys be made to yield the fruits of life. Only by
unremitting energy and the most patient self-denial could starvation be
kept from his door, while constant watchfulness and never-flinching
courage were required to ward off the many dangers that beset his path.
Nature herself seemed pitted against him to contest every inch of his
progress. But his nature was as stern and rough as that of the land he
had come to tame. Accustomed to move steadily on in the pursuit of some
one great purpose, to surmount every obstacle and crush every
impediment, looking neither to the right nor the left, nor even pausing
to pluck the flowrets that bloomed by the wayside, there was for him no
such word as fail. Here the unbounded resources and exhaustless energy
of body and mind found fitting scope. What to ordinary men would seem
but hopeless, cheerless toil, was to him but pastime. The Puritan was
just the man for New England, and New England the land for the Puritan.
How he succeeded let all Christendom proclaim, for his works were not
for himself nor his immediate posterity, but for the whole world.

But it is not so much with the results of his labors that we have to do
as with their effects upon himself and his posterity. Here, as in the
case of the Cavalier, every circumstance of his life tended to aggravate
the hereditary peculiarities of his class. The success of his
enterprise, the crowning of those hopes which had led him to cast off
all ties of the old world, the lofty spirit which induced him to reject
all external aid, and, above all, the crisp, free mountain air he
breathed, begot in him a feeling of independence and superiority, and,
at the same time, ideas of social equality, which have made themselves
manifest to all time. Where all were toilful laborers, and few possessed
more than a sufficiency of worldly goods to provide for the necessities
of the day, there was no r