Neither the Brownes of Salem, nor Roger Williams, nor Mrs. Hutchinson, nor the Baptists, nor the Quakers, have related so much tending to the discredit of the Massachusetts rulers in church and state, as may be collected from these magistrates' own writings. Their infirmities and inconsistencies are detailed by themselves. Their records are brief, but they are numerous. For nearly every important question which we can ask about the fathers of Massachusetts, we can find an answer; there is scarcely an event or circumstance relating to them the date of which is unknown or doubtful. Their own records of various kinds were in general kept with much more fidelity than were those of their descendants of the third or fourth generation. But an immense amount of literary and antiquarian labor has been necessarily spent upon their original documents. The records of courts, of towns and churches, family registers and grave-stones, letters and diaries, interleaved almanacs and last wills, merely afford materials which by diligent toil may be wrought up into annals and biographies. Considering that no reward of money, and scarcely any of fame, offers incitement to this labor, we may wonder at its amount and its accumulations. Mr. James Savage has been unrivalled among the antiquarians of Massachusetts, and richly deserves his place as president of its Historical Society. What he has not done for all who follow in his track, he has taught them how to do. Prince is the only one who should be mentioned before him, and this rather because he preceded Mr. Savage in time; for the results of Prince's labors stop just where we begin to need them most. Mr. Savage's edition of Governor Winthrop's Journal is a miracle of industry, of acuteness, and of pains-taking research. His Gleanings for New England History, gathered during a recent visit to Old England, fill out many blanks left in the memorials of persons, places, and events, besides affording a sum of particulars which are of a general value in illustrating our annals. They are literally "Gleanings," requiring for their collection a survey of the whole field, and abundantly rewarding it.

The two volumes which Mr. Young has given to the public, taken in connection with Mr. Savage's edition of Winthrop, embrace every original and authentic document relating to the early history of Massachusetts. Mr. Young has devoted a volume to each of the ancient and separate Colonies of

Plymouth and the Bay, which now are united in this State. "The Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers of the Colony of Plymouth, from 1602 to 1625, now first collected from Original Records and Contemporaneous printed Documents, and illustrated with Notes," was published in 1841, and soon reached a second edition. It can never be superseded, but will henceforward have its place in all public and private libraries as a complete history of the fathers and the beginnings of the Old Colony. The plan of the work is perfectly suited to fulfil its purpose. We are carried by it into the company of those venerable and strong-hearted men and women. We listen to their deliberations and prayers when the project was first entertained among them of seeking a refuge beyond the ocean. We participate in their frequent crosses and their few comforts. We admire their pious magnanimity, and read over and over again each sentence which expresses their sufferings and their constancy. With the help of the notes which the editor, with great industry and most extensive research, has appended to their own records, the early days of these colonists come again before us. The bleak wilderness wears its ancient aspect, while the grave looks of the exiles are turned upon it, and their serious lips open to give names to headlands, rivers, and swamps, and to cheer one another around the smoking ruins of their first common dwelling, or the frosty burial-spot which has given graves to one half of their company.

The volume now before us is a labor of love of the same character in behalf of the old Bay Colony. No other State in the Union, no other colony, no other country, in the world, can produce such records of its origin as Massachusetts possesses in this volume. Here we have not only the public documents of courts and companies, containing the public history of the origin and plantation of the Colony, but the Journals, Diaries, Memoirs, and Letters of the prime movers in the enterprise. These private papers admit us behind the scenes, and into the homes where our fathers conferred with each other and with their wives and children. We have the means of deciding whether they were led hither by an obstinate and overscrupulous zeal, and a mercenary, trafficking spirit, as some of their enemies then averred, (and they have since reiterated the charge,) or whether the purest motives which can be felt in a human breast moved them to their painful self-exile, and

gave them the fortitude without which the prisons and graves of England would have had more attraction for them than the free wildernesses of America. Doubtless their story has been told often enough to meet the claims of historic truth, and to vindicate their own good name. Still, we have mistaken the spirit of much that has been said and written of late among us, if we have not rightly inferred that detraction has renewed its attacks upon them. It may be only that some have grown weary of the theme; but we submit that ridicule and sneers are not the most Christian, nor the most commendable, expressions of a distaste for the exaggerations and the fulsome and undiscriminating encomiums which have been spent upon the Pilgrim Fathers. Their story truly and simply told is praise enough, and never will weary a real lover of truth.

Only a small portion of the text of this volume appears here in print for the first time; but this fact hardly lessens the value of the collection. The documents composing it are twenty-four in number, all of them written by actual movers or participators in the settlements in Massachusetts Bay; not one of them is anonymous, or apocryphal, or questionable in its authorship. For the most part, they are printed from the original documents, and, except Governor Winthrop's Journal, they embrace every thing of a historical character which is now known to be extant, from the pens of the first planters. The documents are collected from all quarters, a few of them have never before been printed, and of those which were in print, some were inaccessible to the mass of readers, and others, through the carelessness or impatience of former transcribers of the manuscripts, were published in an inaccurate or imperfect form. They are all chronologically arranged, and accompanied by a body of notes serving to illustrate whatever, by the lapse of time or other causes, had become obscure or unintelligible. The biographical notices are numerous and condensed, requiring extensive inquiries for their preparation. Notes in some books and on some subjects are an intolerable nuisance to a reader, being sometimes more properly entitled to a place in the text, the continuity of which they interrupt, but more commonly not entitled to a place in any part of the volume. In Mr. Young's volumes, his abundant notes are absolutely essential. They give direct and sufficient answers to questions which rise naturally as we - No. 132.

VOL. LXIII.

21

read the text, and their completeness and variety double the value of the documents. We feel the more bound to say this, because, while first perusing the book, we felt hastily moved to say something to the contrary. When we were so often referred to the bottom or the middle of a page, to be informed of the population of English towns and cities, and their distances from London, from seaports, and from each other, we were tempted to ask, Why is this? But we now understand that their purpose is to remind or inform all readers, in an indirect way, of the characters and social position of the fathers of Massachusetts, of the bonds which linked their sympathies together while they lived wide apart at home, of the places where their views were entertained, and of the distances which they travelled to meet one another in their necessary arrangements, or to reach the seaports. Some of these travellers, like the famous ministers John Cotton and Richard Mather, were compelled not only to go long distances, but to conceal themselves from pursuivants.

A mere enumeration of the documents which compose this volume, with very brief remarks, followed, like the sermons of their authors, with a few suggestions by way of improvement, is the object which we now propose to ourselves. The first document, called The Planter's Plea, is from a small quarto volume written by the Rev. John White, of Dorchester, England, printed at London, 1630. Though he never came hither himself, Mr. White first moved our fathers to the enterprise. His intimacy with them and his knowledge of all their plans give to his record the highest authority. Yet, strange to say, his little book was not used or mentioned by either Mather, Prince, Hutchinson, Bancroft, or Grahame. Mr. Young takes this extract from it for the sake of its methodical and accurate statement of facts relating to the earliest attempts, made first in fishing and trading voyages, and then by a colony, to establish a permanent settlement in Massachusetts Bay. The second document is the preliminary narrative given in Hubbard's History, relating to the first settlements at Cape Ann and Salem. The whole history has been printed in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society; but Mr. Young's extract, copied from the original manuscript, corrects many errors, and embraces the most original and valuable portion of its contents, which the Ipswich minister probably derived from the high

authority of Roger Conant. The third chapter or document in these Chronicles contains a complete manuscript, now first printed, of the original records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, up to the time when the charter was brought over by Governor Winthrop. The most trifling particulars recorded herein are of high interest. The meetings of the company in England, the names of those interested and present, their deliberations, plans, and efforts, the cautious and serious spirit which guided them, are fully presented. We have even the lists of articles for apparel, subsistence, and common use, which formed the freight of the first ships.

Next, we have, under date of February 16, 1629, a letter from Cradock, governor of the company in England, to Endicott, who presided over the first body of emigrants which came under its direction to Salem. The fifth and sixth chapters contain two general letters of instructions from the company to Endicott and his council. These are followed by four chapters, containing respectively the form of government for the colony, the allotment of lands, the oaths, and the agreement with the ministers. All these documents came from the meetings of the court of the company in England, and show, in their exact method and careful elaboration, that serious work was thought to be in hand.

We find next the journal of his passage in 1629, kept by the Rev. Francis Higginson, of Salem, and his graphic description of the "commodities and discommodities" of the country, written, with some help of poetry, to draw others hither. The only specimen of humor which the whole volume affords is found in this latter piece of Higginson's. Writing about our Indians, he observes," Their hair is generally black, and cut before, like our gentlewomen, and one lock longer than the rest, much like to our gentlemen, which fashion I think came from hence into England." It was probably under some conflict of sensations about the past and the present, that the good minister wrote, that "a sup of New England's air is better than a whole draught of Old England's ale." The next chapter is a curious paper, probably drawn up by Governor Winthrop, containing "General Considerations for the Plantation of New England; with an Answer to several Objections." This is followed by the shortest, though the most pregnant, document in the volume;