d cant about Malignants, which
the first settlers of New England brought over with them as an heir-loom
for their sons. A member of his college told me, that Stiles used to
tell the undergraduates that silly story about the king's being hanged
by mistake for Oliver, after the Restoration; and that he only left it
off when a dry fellow laughed out at the narration, and on being asked
what there was to laugh at, replied, "hanging a man that had lost his
neck." After reading the doctor's book on the Regicides, I cannot doubt
the anecdote, for he carries his love of Oliver into rapture; talks of
"entertaining angels" in the persons of Goffe and Whalley, and applies
to them the beautiful language in which St. Paul commemorates the
saints--"they wandered about, being destitute, afflicted, tormented;
they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the
earth--_of whom the world was not worthy_." The book itself is the most
confused mass of repetition and contradiction I ever saw, and yet proved
to me vastly entertaining. In connexion with it, I got hold of several
others that helped to "elucidate" it; and thus, with much verbal
information, I believe I came to a pretty clear view of the case. I can
only give what I have gathered, in the off-hand way of a tourist, but
perhaps I may serve some one with facts, which they will arrange much
better, in performing the more serious task of a historian.

After spending several weeks in the vicinity of New York, I left that
city in a steamer for a visit to the "Eastern States;" our passage lying
through the East River and Long Island Sound, and requiring about five
hours sail to complete the trip to Newhaven. I found the excursion by no
means an agreeable one. The Sound itself is wide, and our way lay at
equal distances between its shores, which, being quite low, are not
easily descried by a passenger. Then there came up a squall, which
occasioned a great swell in the sea, and sickness was the consequence
among not a few of the company on board. Altogether, the steamer being
greatly inferior to those on the Hudson, and crowded with a very
uninteresting set of passengers, I was glad to retreat from the cabin,
going forward, and looking out impatiently for the end of our voyage.

Here it was that I first caught sight of two bold headlands, looming up,
a little retired from the shore, and giving a dignity to the coast at
this particular spot, by which it is not generall