liament, under the lead of the boldest spirits that ever lived, combining with Scotland, and subduing Ireland, and striking terror into the continental governments, the latter were forming a frail union of the New-England colonies, for immediate defence, against a savage foe. While the Lord General Cromwell,' (who seems to have picked up this modest title among the spoils of the routed aristocracy,) in the superb flattery of Milton,

'Guided by faith, and matchless fortitude,

To peace and truth his glorious way had ploughed,
And on the neck of crowned fortune proud
Had reared God's trophies,'

our truly excellent and incorruptible Winthrop was compelled to descend from the chair of state, and submit to an impeachment.

And what was the comparative success?—There were, to say the least, as many excesses committed in England as in Massachusetts Bay. There was as much intolerance, on the part of men just escaped from persecution; as much bigotry, on the part of those, who had themselves suffered for conscience' sake; as much unreasonable austerity; as much sour temper; as much bad taste; as much for charity to forgive, and as much for humanity to deplore. The temper, in fact, in the two Commonwealths, was much the same; and some of the leading spirits played a part in both. And to what effect? On the other side of the Atlantic, the whole experiment ended in a miserable failure. The Commonwealth became successively oppressive, hateful, contemptible: a greater burden than the despotism, on whose ruins it was raised. The people of England, after sacrifices incalculable, of property and life, after a struggle of thirty years' duration, allowed the general, who happened to have the greatest number of troops at his command, to bring back the old system,-King, Lords, and Church,— with as little ceremony, as he would employ, in issuing the orders of the day. After asking, for thirty years, What is the will of the Lord concerning his people? what is it becoming a pure church to do? what does the cause of liberty demand, in the day of its regeneration?-there was but one cry in England, What does General Monk think? what will General Monk do? will he bring back the king with conditions, or without? And General Monk concluded to bring him back without.

On this side of the Atlantic, and in about the same period, the work which our fathers took in hand was, in the main, successfully done. They came to found a republican colony; they founded it. They came to establish a free church. They established what they called a free church; and transmitted to us, what we call a free church. In accomplishing this, which they did anticipate, they brought also to pass what they did not so distinctly foresee, what could not, in the nature of things, in its detail and circumstance, be anticipated, the foundation of a great, prosperous, and growing republic. We have not been just to these men. I am disposed to do all justice to the memory of each succeeding generation. I admire the indomitable perseverance, with which the contest for principle was kept up, under the second charter. I reverence, this side idolatry, the wisdom and fortitude of the revolutionary and constitutional leaders, but I believe we ought to go back beyond them all, for the real framers of the Commonwealth. I believe that its foundation stones, like those of the Capitol of Rome, lie deep and solid, out of sight, at the bottom of the walls,-Cyclopean work, the work of the Pilgrims,-with nothing below them but the rock of ages. I will not quarrel with their rough corners, or uneven sides; above all, I will not change them for the wood, hay, and stubble of modern builders.

But, it is more than time, fellow citizens, that I should draw to a close. These venerable foundations of our republic were laid on the very spot, where we stand; by the fathers of Massachusetts. Here, before they were able to erect a suitable place for worship, they were wont, beneath the branches of a spreading tree, to commend their wants, their sufferings, and their hopes to Him, that dwelleth not in houses made with hands; here, they erected their first habitations; here, they gathered their first church; here, they made their first graves.

Yes, on the very spot where we are assembled; now crowned with this spacious church; surrounded by the comfortable abodes of a dense population; there were, during the first season after the landing of Winthrop, fewer dwellings for the living, than graves for the dead. It seemed the will of Providence, that our fathers should be tried by the extremities of either season. When the

Pilgrims approached the coast of Plymouth, they found it clad with all the terrors of a northern winter:

The sea around was black with storms,

And white the shores with snow.

of a company of men,

We can scarcely now think, without tears, women, and children, brought up in tenderness, exposed, after several months' uncomfortable confinement on ship-board, to the rigors of our November and December sky, on an unknown, barbarous coast, whose frightful rocks, even now, strike terror into the heart of the returning mariner; though he knows that the home of his childhood awaits him, within their enclosure.

The Massachusetts Company arrived at the close of June. No vineyards, as now, clothed our inhospitable hill-sides; no blooming orchards, as at the present day, wore the livery of Eden, and loaded the breeze with sweet odors ;-no rich pastures, nor waving crops, stretched beneath the eye, along the way side, from village to village, as if Nature had been spreading her halls with a carpet, fit to be pressed by the footsteps of her descending God! The beauty and the bloom of the year had passed. The earth, not yet subdued by culture, bore upon its untilled bosom nothing but a dismal forest, that mocked their hunger with rank and unprofitable vegetation. The sun was hot in the heavens. The soil was parched, and the hand of man had not yet taught its secret springs to flow from their fountains. The wasting disease of the heartsick mariner was upon the men ;-and the women and children thought of the pleasant homes of England, as they sunk down from day to day, and died at last for want of a cup of cold water, in this melancholy land of promise. From the time the company sailed from England, in April, up to the December following, there died not less than two hundred persons,-nearly one a day.

They were buried, say our records, about the Town-hill. This is the Town-hill. We are gathered over the ashes of our forefathers.

It is good, but solemn, to be here. We live on holy ground; all our hill-tops are the altars of precious sacrifice:

This is stored with the sacred dust of the first victims in the cause of liberty.

And that is rich from the life stream of the noble hearts, who bled to sustain it.

Here, beneath our feet, unconscious that we commemorate their worth, repose the meek and sainted martyrs, whose flesh sunk beneath the lofty temper of their noble spirits; and there, rest the heroes, who presented their dauntless foreheads to the God of battles, when he came to his awful baptism of blood and of fire.

Happy the fate, which has laid them so near to each other, the early and the latter champions of the one great cause! And happy we, who are permitted to reap in peace the fruit of their costly sacrifice! Happy, that we can make our pious pilgrimage to the smooth turf of that venerable summit, once ploughed with the wheels of maddening artillery, ringing with all the dreadful voices of war, wrapped in smoke, and streaming with blood! Happy, that here, where our fathers sank, beneath the burning sun, into the parched clay, we live, and assemble, and mingle sweet counsel, and grateful thoughts of them, in comfort and peace!

Bunker Hill.

A

DISCOURSE

ON THE IMPORTANCE TO PRACTICAL MEN OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE, AND ON THE ENCOURAGEMENTS TO ITS PURSUIT.*

THE object of the Mechanics' Institute is, to diffuse useful knowledge among the mechanic class of the community. It aims, in general, to improve and inform the minds of its members; and particularly to illustrate and explain the principles of the various arts of life, and render them familiar to that portion of the community, who are to exercise these arts as their occupation in society. It is also a proper object of the Institute, to point out the connexion between the mechanic arts and the other pursuits and occupations, and show the foundations, which exist in our very nature, for a cordial union between them all.

These objects recommend themselves strongly and obviously to general approbation. While the cultivation of the mind, in its more general sense, and in connexion with morals, is as important to mechanics as to any other class of the community, nothing is plainer than that those whose livelihood depends on the skilful practice of the arts, ought to be instructed, as far as possible, in the scientific principles and natural laws, on which the arts are founded. This is necessary, in order that the arts themselves should be pursued to the greatest advantage; that popular errors should be erad

* The following Essay is compiled from a discourse delivered by the author, at the opening of the Mechanics' Institute in Boston, in November, 1827; an address before the Middlesex County Lyceum, at Concord, in November, 1829; and an oration before the Columbian Institute at Washington, January, 1830.