LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL IN 1881 Frontispiece From a photograph taken in England GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU From the painting by Allan Ramsay (1766) in the EDMUND SPENSER From the painting in the National Portrait Gallery, 92 174 222 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTU T RIES AGO1 1865 HE history of New England is written imperishably on the face of a continent, and in characters as beneficent as they are enduring. In the Old World national pride feeds itself with the record of battles and conquests; - battles which proved nothing and settled nothing; conquests which shifted a boundary on the map, and put one ugly head instead of another on the coin which the people paid to the tax-gatherer. But wherever the New Englander travels among the sturdy commonwealths which have sprung from the seed of the Mayflower, churches, schools, colleges, tell him where the men of his race have been, or their influence has penetrated; and an intelligent freedom is the monument of conquests whose results are not to be measured in square miles. Next to the fugitives whom Moses led out of Egypt, the little shipload of outcasts who landed I History of New England during the Stuart Dynasty. By John Gorham Palfrey. Vol. iii. Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Third Series, vols. ix. and x. Fourth Series, vols. vi. and vii. |