er freedom and happiness, than were then enjoyed, were wont to pass; all the most enthusiastic philanthropists and patriots of the age, were deeply interested in the cause of American colonization. They looked upon America as the promised land, where humanity and religion would at last find rest; and, if forbidden to enter upon it themselves, they still rejoiced that they had been permitted to behold it.

The prevalence of this interest in America, throughout the best circles of society, explains the remarkable fact that the first emigrants, unlike those who usually expatriate themselves, were among the most enlightened persons of their times, men of genius, learning, and family. When our fancy represents the pilgrim passengership, it is not crowded with the unfortunate, poor, and depressed classes of the community, but the most refined and accomplished specimens of the civilization of the age are before us. The venerable forms of scholars and philosophers of whom the world was not worthy, the pride of universities, cathedrals, and palaces, are there. In their mien and deportment, we discern the high-born and the nobly bred. In the strength of a holy purpose, and a sublime moral courage, they are cheerfully exchanging the lordly mansions and the splendid refinements of the old world, for the sufferings, privations, and dangers of the new.

It is the mingling of such characters with the obscurer colonists, that gives its peculiar charm to the first age of America. The accomplishments of an advanced state of civilization were thus made to blend with the ruder and sterner features of the wilderness life. The two extreme points of human progress were brought back into direct contact. The habits, which belong to the highest degree of refinement and to the most primitive and uncultivated condition of humanity, were at once exemplified in the same individuals. The studiously polished deportment of the period, when what is called the "old school" of manners was receiving its shape and form, was to be seen in log houses; and the same person whose evenings were spent in the studies of philosophy, learning, and religion, was engaged during the day in the midst of the forest, or floating in a bark canoe ; toiling in those labors, which were the occupations of the rudest and most barbarous ages, the employments of the period, when

"Nature first made man,

And wild in woods the noble savage ran." Some of these distinguished emigrants, such as the lady Arabella Johnson, the Higginsons, the Saltonstalls, the Winthrops, and the Endicotts, spent the remainder of their lives in the land of their voluntary exile; some, however, were arrested on their way, and prevented from accom

plishing their design of removing to the new world, as was the case with the celebrated Mr. Pym, the immortal Hampden, Sir Arthur Haslerigg, Lord Say and Seal, Lord Brooke, and Oliver Cromwell himself; while others again, like Hugh Peters and the subject of this memoir, after a brief stay in America, were called home to the mother country, to devote their labors and lives to the great cause of liberty there.

CHAPTER II.

Sir Henry Vane. - His Parentage and Family Connexions. Education.- Early Travels on the Continent. - Puritan Sentiments.

moval to America.

Re

THERE is something very remarkable in the manner in which the name of SIR HENRY VAne, who is now acknowledged to have been one of the greatest men his country ever produced, is passed over by the principal English writers. They occasionally make a brief and incidental allusion to his great abilities; and some of them give way to a momentary impulse of enthusiasm, when they speak of the manner of his death. Not one of them appears to be aware of his various and extraordinary public services; and they all unite in representing his virtues, whatever might have been their degree, as extinguished in what they are pleased to call his religious fanaticism. The consequence has been, that, while a vague and general feeling of admiration, brought down by tradition from one generation to another, has been associated with his name, but little has been known either of his actions or his merits. No attempt 7

VOL. IV.

has heretofore been made to trace his history, or delineate his character.*

When the reader shall have examined the extracts from his writings, and the events of his life, as they will be presented in this memoir, he will not be at a loss to explain the fact, that Vane has been thus overlooked by the historians. While his sincere and real republicanism placed him far above the sympathies of the profligate and hypocritical demagogues who struggled for power, under that name, during his day, it has also deterred the English patriots and reformers of subsequent

A work was printed soon after Sir Henry Vane's death, which purported to be a biography. It did not deserve to be so considered, as it contained scarcely a single fact in illustration of his history, and was a mere rhapsody by a religious enthusiast. It was written by George Sikes, B. D., Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. We cannot wonder or complain, that those, who have received their idea of Vane from this book, should regard him as an unintelligible fanatic. The following is its Title. "The Life and Death of Sir Henry Vane, Kt., or a short Narrative of the main Passages of his earthly Pilgrimage; together with a true Account of his purely Christian, Peaceable, Spiritual, Gospel-Principles, Doctrine, Life, and Way of Worshipping God, for which he suffered Contradiction and Reproach from all sorts of Sinners, and at last, a violent Death, June 14, Anno 1662. To which is added, his last Exhortation to his Children, the Day before his Death. Printed in the Year 1662."