een stirred by it."

"It must, indeed," said Grandfather. "It would be entertaining and
instructive, at the present day, to imagine what were Mr. Hutchinson's
thoughts as he looked back upon the long vista of events with which this
chair was so remarkably connected."

And Grandfather allowed his fancy to shape out an image of
Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson, sitting in an evening reverie by his
fireside, and meditating on the changes that had slowly passed around
the chair.

A devoted Monarchist, Hutchinson would heave no sigh for the subversion
of the original republican government, the purest that the world had
seen, with which the colony began its existence. While reverencing the
grim and stern old Puritans as the founders of his native land, he would
not wish to recall them from their graves, nor to awaken again that
king-resisting spirit which he imagined to be laid asleep with
them forever. Winthrop, Dudley, Bellingham, Endicott, Leverett, and
Bradstreet,--all these had had their day. Ages might come and go, but
never again would the people's suffrages place a republican governor in
their ancient chair of state.

Coming down to the epoch of the second charter, Hutchinson thought of
the ship-carpenter Phips springing from the lowest of the people and
attaining to the loftiest station in the land. But he smiled to perceive
that this governor's example would awaken no turbulent ambition in the
lower orders; for it was a king's gracious boon alone that made the
ship-carpenter a ruler. Hutchinson rejoiced to mark the gradual growth
of an aristocratic class, to whom the common people, as in duty bound,
were learning humbly to resign the honors, emoluments, and authority of
state. He saw--or else deceived himself--that, throughout this epoch,
the people's disposition to self-government had been growing weaker
through long disuse, and now existed only as a faint traditionary
feeling.

The lieutenant-governor's reverie had now come down to the period at
which he himself was sitting in the historic chair. He endeavored to
throw his glance forward over the coming years. There, probably, he saw
visions of hereditary rank for himself and other aristocratic colonists.
He saw the fertile fields of New England proportioned out among a
few great landholders, and descending by entail from generation to
generation. He saw the people a race of tenantry, dependent on their
lords. He saw stars, garters, coronets, and castles.

"