Samuel Maverick was found, in 1630, comfortably seated on Noddle's Island, which he had fortified; and the first mention of him records his allowed generosity in entertaining all comers gratis. He was a man of sufficient means, of good character, though far from agreeing with the new comers in their religious views, and was, we believe, the first possessor of an African slave in North America. But whence and when he came here we know not. William Blackstone had probably resided on the peninsula of Boston since 1625. He had been an Episcopal minister, and though by no means attached to the Lords Bishop, he appears to have had an equal dislike to the Lords Brethren. After Boston had been occupied by the new-comers about five years, and Blackstone had resided here at least ten, he sold all his rights and claims, and moved away for retirement and quiet. He was a studious man, possessing a library large for the time and place; he was not contentious, neither had he any open collision with his countrymen. But a mystery hangs over him likewise. For a curious and instructive note about him, we refer our readers to Mr. Young's volume.

Other old planters there were here, of less note; but these four, living apart from each other, of very different tastes and characters, finding their happiness and subsistence in their own chosen way, are the almost mythical personages of early Massachusetts history. They must have loved solitude, but they could not have been luxurious idlers. Mr. Young has not been able by the help of his researches to communicate any further information concerning either of these old planters. He suggests, that they all probably came over in some of the fishing-vessels that were constantly hovering on the coast. This is undoubtedly so; but whether they came originally to fish, and straggled from their respective parties, or purposely sought an abode here, allured by the exciting scenes of a new region, we can now scarcely hope to know.

This leads us to mention, that those who made the permanent settlements in Massachusetts Bay were not the first companies of English adventurers who had sounded these waters. After Captain John Smith (who, we believe, was the first historical person to bear a name which has ceased to be a name when considered as defining a person), had opened this harbour to the English, fishing-vessels came to the Banks and to Cape Ann every year. Many successive enterprises

had terminated disastrously. It was found impracticable to carry out any plan which connected planting with a fishing voyage; for the shoals and rocks which harboured the fish would yield no other sustenance. Yet the skill and expense which had been given to these undertakings were not wasted. As the patriarch White says of them, "Nothing new fell out in the managing of this stock, seeing experience hath taught us, that, as in building houses, the first stones of the foundation are buried under ground and are not seen, so in planting colonies, the first stocks employed that way are consumed, although they serve for a foundation to the work."

These fishing voyages made the sailors and shipmasters acquainted with the way across the ocean, with the harbours, soundings, and coast of New England, with the language and habits of the natives, and led to the erection of drying-frames, booths, sheds, and other shelters, which brought hither the first tokens of civilization. There had been five abortive attempts to plant colonies in New England, between 1607 and 1625. These were undertaken with sole reference to the fisheries and a barter trade with the Indians. The vessels that came hither remained only long enough to prepare the fish upon the salting and drying-frames, or to change their cargoes. It was soon found, that a long delay upon the coast was attended with great expense of wages and provisions; and the project was devised of leaving a portion of the men to fish while the vessels returned. Great hardships, exposures, and bodily privations were endured upon our cold rocks by those who ventured to undertake this service. We cannot but feel a great respect for the old shipmasters who engaged in these enterprises. Often they had but crazy vessels, and the poor accommodations were overburdened by crowded companies. Yet we are amazed at the small number of great disasters which are recorded. The task of unlading or relading a vessel in these waters, without the help of wharves or barges, across salt marshes or long beaches, called out all the energies of patience and perseverance which the mariners. possessed, and made equal drafts upon their brains and their muscles. Indeed, were imagination to construct its visions only from the facts which are known concerning these adventurers, our earliest history would be an interchange of tragedy and comedy.

It is evident, however, that men who might serve for

fishermen and adventurers would not be of the most promising sort to undertake the settlement of a permanent colony, under unpropitious circumstances, and to transfer to it the better influences of civilized society. Had no other purposes than fishing or the peltry trade presented themselves to the inhabitants of Old England, the last two centuries might perhaps have made our bay as much of a harbour as it now is, and might have multiplied the tokens of human life upon our coasts; but the scene along our shores would never have worn the aspect it now has to our eyes. Large wealth was to be brought here, before any could go forth, or even be found upon the soil, or in trade. Money may have been one of the least requisites for a permanent settlement; but it was indispensable, and it did its full part. Though, as a speculation, the enterprise was altogether unprofitable to the charter company, yet it was singly with a view to profit that this company was formed in England. The stock proprietors did not entertain the idea of transferring the government hither, still less of transporting themselves as permanent exiles. The original design of the English adventurers who obtained a royal patent to territory in New England was precisely the same as that which began, and has ever since attached to, the honorable East India Company. But wealth of another sort than that of the purse availed itself of the opportunity to turn a trading colony into a permanent Christian commonwealth, of actual residents, making for themselves a home. The project of converting New England from a place for mercantile speculations into a land of civil, religious, and domestic institutions was an afterthought, born of a pious and Christian zeal. The first suggestion of this project undoubtedly came from the Rev. John White, "usually called," says Anthony Wood," patriarch of Dorchester, or Patriarch White," who seems to have had equal influence with the Episcopal and the Puritanical portion of the Church of England, and whose name frequently occurs in the records of the meetings of the Massachusetts Company in England. After the design moved by him began to be entertained, it soon grew into a warm and devoted purpose. It is easy to trace in the records of the company the growth and more frequent utterance of that religious spirit which animated, and, beyond all question, fulfilled, the great undertaking. We observe, too, the sifting process which winnowed out the men.

The great civil basis of the chartered plantations made in New England was a patent signed by King James, November 3d, 1620, by which the merchant adventurers to the northern colony of Virginia, between forty and forty-eight degrees north latitude, were incorporated as "The Council established at Plymouth, in the County of Devon, for the planting, ruling, ordering, and governing of New England, in America." This council, by a deed under the common seal, dated March 19th, 1628 (N. S.), sold to another mercantile company" that part of New England that lies between Merrimack and Charles River, in the bottom of the Massachusetts Bay." Then, by the influence of Mr. White, these purchasers were brought into acquaintance with several other religious persons of like quality in and about London, such as Mr. Winthrop, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Dudley, Mr. Cradock, Mr. Goffe, and Sir Richard Saltonstall; who, being first associated with them, at last bought of them all their right and interest in New England aforesaid." It was by these gentlemen, their associates, and servants, who were members of the Church of England, though troubled with scruples about its ceremonies, and craving more freedom for themselves without wrong to others, that the settlements in the Bay Colony were effected. They took care to have their patent ratified and its liberties enlarged by the king.

As soon as the religious spirit obtained ascendency in the new company, the purpose of transporting themselves and their families was heartily entertained. This was the most serious matter which could possibly have engaged their minds. Their deliberations upon it have the highest interest to us, because this is, in fact, the most critical point in Massachusetts, or New England, history. The characters and deeds of our fathers are to be estimated by the honest standard of judgment thus furnished us. They did not undertake to open an asylum like that which Rome afforded in its early days. They did not invite the adventurous, the roving, the discontented, and the fortune-hunting, still less the debauched, the profligate, and the criminal, to an El Dorado or a "Merry Mount." They extended no inducements, they opened no door of entrance, to the fanatical or eccentric dreamers and thinkers who abounded at that time in England. Religious liberty, in the sense in which it is now understood, was then only conceived in the womb of time, not born even

in the thoughts of statesmen or divines. Even the theory of it was not intrusted to our fathers, any more than was the theory of the steam-engine or the magnetic telegraph. What folly and injustice, then, are involved in a judgment instituted against them on the ground that they did not adopt unborn wisdom, and principles of civil and religious policy which have required two centuries since their day for even a partial recognition! Had our fathers opened here the free asylum which many of their modern calumniators seem to think was the end of their enterprise, they would have verified in their own experience the old adage of "jumping from the frying-pan into the fire." Their estates and their tempers were scorched at home; but they would have been burned up here. They would have crossed the ocean to place themselves in a situation of anarchy, discord, and distracting confusion. Even in the settlement of William Penn's colony, under the light of a half-century of advanced trial of principles, some exclusive rights were recognized, some religious favoritism was exercised, and all the increased freedom there enjoyed was attended with dissensions and misfortunes greater even than those which occurred in Massachusetts.

The views and intentions which our fathers are censured for not discarding were, in fact, the real promptings of their exile. Had they not been influenced by them, they would have remained in England. They could hear ranters in religion and no-government men in politics there, without exchanging their estates for rocks and sand-hills in America, and inviting all sorts of discontents and vagabonds to come here and erect another tower of Babel. The simple truth is, that certain religious and high-minded men in England, possessing fair estates, finding themselves of one way of thinking, united together in the purchase of a large farm, with some mill-streams, many rocks, a fishing-coast, and the chances of trade with the Indians. They thought it would be a good place for them to inhabit and improve, that they might enjoy in it their own views of religion and of morals, governing themselves by certain institutions of their own, which were not to be inconsistent with the laws of England. exchanged good soil for hard soil, comforts for crosses, hoping also to escape from a state of constant annoyance to a condition of lasting and pure repose. They bought their strip of territory of the original patentees, and they bought it

They