der
to redeem himself man must do constant penance, must repudiate every
natural and healthy impulse, and turn his back on joy and beauty.

Puritanism celebrated its reign of terror in England during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, destroying and crushing every
manifestation of art and culture. It was the spirit of Puritanism
which robbed Shelley of his children, because he would not bow to the
dicta of religion. It was the same narrow spirit which alienated
Byron from his native land, because that great genius rebelled
against the monotony, dullness, and pettiness of his country. It was
Puritanism, too, that forced some of England's freest women into the
conventional lie of marriage: Mary Wollstonecraft and, later, George
Eliot. And recently Puritanism has demanded another toll--the life
of Oscar Wilde. In fact, Puritanism has never ceased to be the most
pernicious factor in the domain of John Bull, acting as censor of the
artistic expression of his people, and stamping its approval only on
the dullness of middle-class respectability.

It is therefore sheer British jingoism which points to America as the
country of Puritanic provincialism. It is quite true that our life
is stunted by Puritanism, and that the latter is killing what is
natural and healthy in our impulses. But it is equally true that it
is to England that we are indebted for transplanting this spirit on
American soil. It was bequeathed to us by the Pilgrim fathers.
Fleeing from persecution and oppression, the Pilgrims of Mayflower
fame established in the New World a reign of Puritanic tyranny and
crime. The history of New England, and especially of Massachusetts,
is full of the horrors that have turned life into gloom, joy into
despair, naturalness into disease, honesty and truth into hideous
lies and hypocrisies. The ducking-stool and whipping post, as well
as numerous other devices of torture, were the favorite English
methods for American purification.

Boston, the city of culture, has gone down in the annals of
Puritanism as the "Bloody Town." It rivaled Salem, even, in her
cruel persecution of unauthorized religious opinions. On the now
famous Common a half-naked woman, with a baby in her arms, was
publicly whipped for the crime of free speech; and on the same spot
Mary Dyer, another Quaker woman, was hanged in 1659. In fact, Boston
has been the scene of more than one wanton crime committed by
Puritanism. Salem, in the summ