CLXXXIII.-ARRIVAL OF THE MAYFLOWER.

LET us go up for a moment, in imagination, to yonder hill, which overlooks the village and the bay, and suppose ourselves standing there on some bleak, ungenial morning, in November. The coast is fringed with ice. Dreary forests, interspersed with sandy tracts, fill the background. Nothing of humanity quickens on the spot, save a few roaming savages, who, ill provided with what even they deem the necessaries of life, are digging with their fingers a scanty repast out of the frozen sands.

No friendly light-houses had as yet hung up their cressets upon your headlands. No brave pilot-boat was hovering like a sea-bird on the tops of the waves, beyond the Cape, to guide the shattered bark to its harbor. No charts and soundings made the secret pathways of the deep as plain as a graveled road through a lawn. No comfortable dwelling along the line of the shore, and where are now your well-inhabited streets, spoke a welcome to the Pilgrim. No steeple poured the music of sabbath morn into the ear of the fugitive for conscience' sake. Primeval wildness and native desolation brood over sea and land.

But this dreary waste, which we thus contemplate in imagination, and which the Pilgrims traversed in sad reality, is a chosen land. It is a theater upon which an all-glorious drama is to be enacted. On this frozen soil, driven from the ivy-clad churches of their mother-land, escaped, at last, from loathsome prisons, the meek fathers of a pure church will lay the spiritual basement of their temple. Here, on the everlasting rock of liberty, they will establish the foundation of a free state.

Had

This feeble company is not to be marshaled by gartered statesmen or mitered prelates. Fleets will not be despatched to convoy the little band, nor armies to protect it. there been honors to be won, or pleasures to be enjoyed, or plunder to be grasped, hungry courtiers, midsummer friends, godless adventurers, would have eaten out the heart of the enterprise.

Silken Buckinghams and Somersets would have blasted it with their patronage. But, safe amid their unenvied perils, strong in their inoffensive weakness, rich in their untempting poverty, the patient fugitives are permitted to pursue unmolested the thorny paths of tribulation.

"Stern famine guards the solitary coast,

And winter barricades the realms of frost."

That single dark speck, just discernible through the perspective glass, on the waste of waters, is the fated vessel. The storm moans through her tattered canvas, as she creeps, almost sinking, to her anchorage in Provincetown harbor; and there she lies, with all her treasures, not of silver and gold, (for of these she has none,) but of courage, of patience, of zeal, of high spiritual daring.

So often as I dwell in imagination on this scene; when I consider the condition of the Mayflower, utterly incapable as she was of living through another gale; when I survey the terrible front presented by our coast to the navigator, I dare not call it a mere piece of good fortune that the wall of the shore should be broken by this extraordinary Cape, as if on purpose to receive and encircle the pre

cious vessel.

As I now see her, freighted with the destinies of a continent, barely escaped from the perils of the deep, approaching the shore precisely where the broad sweep of this most remarkable headland presents almost the only point, at which, for hundreds of miles, she could, with any case have made a harbor, I feel my spirit raised above the sphere of mere natural agencies.

I see the mountains of New England rising from their rocky thrones. They rush forward into the ocean, settling down as they advance; and there they range themselves, as a mighty bulwark around the heaven-directed vessel. Yes, the everlasting God himself stretches out the arm of his mercy and his power, in substantial manifestation, and gathers the meek company of his worshipers, as in the hollow of his hand. FROM EVERETT.

CLXXXIV.-FRUITS OF THE PILGRIM ENTERPRISE.

Ir, on this day, after the lapse of two centuries, one of the fathers of New England, released from the sleep of death, could reappear on earth, what would be his emotions of joy and wonder! In lieu of a wilderness, here and there interspersed with solitary cabins, where life was scarcely worth the danger of preserving it, he would behold joyful harvests, a population crowded even to satiety. He would see villages, towns, cities, states, swarming with industrious inhabitants, hills graced with temples of devotion, and valleys vocal with the lessons of virtue.

Casting his eye on the ocean, which he passed in fear and trembling, he would see it covered with enterprising fleets returning with the whale, as their captive, and the wealth of the Indies for their cargo. He would behold the little colony which he planted, grown into gigantic stature, and forming an honorable part of a glorious confederacy, the pride of the earth and the favorite of heaven.

He would witness with exultation the general prevalence of correct principles of government and virtuous habits of action. How gladly would he gaze upon the long stream of light and renown from Harvard's classic fount, and the kindred springs of Yale, of Providence, of Dartmouth, and of Brunswick. Would you fill his bosom with honest pride, tell him of Franklin, who made thunder sweet music, and the lightning innocent fireworks. Tell him of Adams, the venerable sage, reserved by heaven, himself a blessing, to witness its blessing on our nation of Ames, whose tongue has become an angel's: of Perry,

"Blest by his God, with one illustrious day,
A blaze of glory ere he passed away."

And tell him, pilgrim of Plymouth, these are thy descendants. Show him the stately structures, the splendid benevolence, the masculine intellect, and the sweet hospitality of the metropolis of New England. Show him the glorious fruits of his humble enterprise, and ask him if this,

all this, be not an atonement for his sufferings, a recompense for his toils, a blessing on his efforts, and a heartexpanding triumph for the pilgrim adventurer.

CLXXXV. THE PILGRIM FATHERS.

THE Pilgrim Fathers! where are they?
The waves that brought them o'er,
Still roll in the bay, and throw their spray,
As they break along the shore:

Still roll in the bay, as they rolled that day,
When the Mayflower moored below,
When the sea around was black with storms,
And white the shore with snow.

The mists, that wrapped the Pilgrim's sleep,
Still brood upon the tide;

And his rocks yet keep their watch by the deep,
To stay its waves of pride.

But the snow-white sail, that he gave to the gale,
When the heavens looked dark, is gone;

As an angel's wing, through an opening cloud,
Is seen, and then withdrawn.

The Pilgrim exile! sainted name!

The hill, whose icy brow

Rejoiced when he came, in the morning's flame,
In the morning's flame burns now.

And the moon's cold light, as it lay that night,
On the hill-side and the sea,

Still lies where he laid his houseless head;
But the Pilgrim! where is he?

The Pilgrim Fathers are at rest.

When summer's throned on high,

And the world's warm breast is in verdure dressed,
Go, stand on the hill where they lic.

The earliest ray of the golden day

On that hallowed spot is cast;

And the evening sun, as he leaves the world,
Looks kindly on that spot last.

The Pilgrim spirit has not fled;

It walks in noon's broad light;

And it watches the bed of the glorious dead,
With their holy stars by night.

It watches the bed of the brave who have bled,
And shall guard this ice-bound shore,

Till the waves of the bay, where the Mayflower lay,
Shall foam and freeze no more.

FROM PIERPONT.

CLXXXVI.-THE MARTYRS.

WHAT heard I then? A ringing shriek of pain,
Such as forever haunts the tortured ear,
I heard a sweet and solemn-breathing strain,
Piercing the flames, untremulous and clear!
The rich triumphal tones! I knew them well,
As they came floating with a breezy swell!
Man's voice was there: a clarion voice to cheer
In the mid-battle: ay, to turn the flying:

Woman's that might have sung of heaven beside the dying!

It was a fearful, yet a glorious thing,

To hear that hymn of martyrdom, and know
That its glad stream of melody could spring
Up from the unsounded gulfs of human woe!
Alvar! Theresa! what is deep? what strong?
God's breath within the soul! It filled that song
From your victorious voices! But the glow

On the dry, hot, and lurid air increased:

Faint grew the sounds: more faint: I listened: they had ceased!

And thou indeed hadst perished, my soul's friend!

I might form other ties, but thou alone

Couldst with a glance the vail of dimness rend,
By other years o'er boyhood's memory thrown!
Others might aid me forward; thou and I
Had mingled the fresh thoughts that early die:
Once flowering, never more! And thou wert gone!
Who could give back my youth, my spirit free;
Or be in aught again what thou hadst been to me?