It may be added that attendance at service was the only amusement shared by the sanctimonious Pilgrims, and from it came strength for the weekly conflict. To them, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy" held a meaning quite unknown now. New Englanders may well be proud of such ancestry, and yet congratulate themselves that they did not belong to the earlier generations. Literature in these days was the handmaid of religion, and attendance at school was as obligatory as at church. Settlements of fifty families were compelled to establish a school-if there were a hundred, it must be a grammar-school. In 1636, Cambridge College was founded. It did not receive-like William and Mary, in Virginia rich gifts from English donors; but the four hundred pounds with which it was started were gotten in New England. Two years later, by bequest of John Harvard, a young Charlestown minister, the college had an endowment fund of three thousand five hundred dollars, and three hundred volumes constituting his entire library. In 1639, it was ordered that "the college agreed upon formerly to bee built at Cambridg shal bee called Harvard Colledge," in honour of its first benefactor; and in 1650, the institution was chartered" for the education of the English and Indian youth of the country in knowledge and godlyness." Nearly a hundred years after John Harvard's death, the alumni of Harvard University erected a monument to his memory in the burial-ground of Charlestown, dedicated with an address by Edward Everett. Yale College was founded in 1700, and its library was begun at a meeting of Connecticut ministers, each depositing forty books upon a table, declaring as he laid them down: "I give these books for the founding of a college in this colony." A commemorative stone may be seen at Saybrook, Connecticut, the original site of the college. We are reminded of Burges Johnson's words: "The little Yankee colleges, God bless them heart and soul Each little lump of leaven that leaveneth the whole; What need of mighty numbers if they fashion, one by one, The men who do the little things a-needing to be done? And from the "stern and rock-bound" New England coast the land of the evening lamp and the winter fire has come to us a more abundant literature than from the "Sunny South." Weighty tomes there are with cumbersome titles that belong to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and while our literature of to-day concerns itself chiefly with the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we must, in order to get the continuity of our subject, take from the top shelf of the dark closet a few of these dusty recordings, and glance at the men who penned them. Governor Bradford himself a Mayflower passenger was an inveterate diarist. He ruled the Province from 1621 to 1657, and it is said that he managed the affairs with the discretion of a Washington. He was the skilful diplomat who- during a famine when a chief sent to the colony a bundle of arrows tied in a serpent's skin-returned the skin crammed with powder and bullets. Governor Bradford appears here not because of his political wisdom, but as the author of his unique History of Plymouth Plantation." This was not written in Captain John Smith's boastful style, but just as a quaint, vigorous, straightforward chronicle, inspired by piety. It describes feelingly the persecution in England; the departure for Holland; the setting forth from Delfthaven; the perils encountered on the furious ocean; the compact and the landing; the desolate wilds and famine; the sufferings and death-roll of the first winter; troubles and treaties with the Indians; the building of the State on a sure foundation; - all ending in peace and liberty. This picturesque but ponderous year-book would have made Governor Bradford a forerunner in letters, but he can hardly be ranked as "The Father of American Literature," as he has sometimes been styled. There are fine passages but little perspective. The following which refers to leaving Holland has always been accounted a gem. "So they lefte yt goodly and pleasant citie which had been ther resting-place near 12 years; but they knew they were pilgrimes, and looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to ye heavens, their dearest countrie, and quieted their spirits." The manuscript of this famous "History of Plymouth Plantation," consisting of two hundred and seventy pages, disappeared from Boston in colonial days, and came into the possession of the Lord Bishop of London. In 1897, on request, he generously restored it to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. On Plymouth's hallowed "Burial Hill," stands a marble obelisk, in memory of Governor William Bradford, Zealous Puritan and Sincere Christian, Governor of Plymouth Colony, 1621-1657. Edward Winslow (1595-1655), was another wellknown Plymouth diarist. His, however, was a daybook, not a year-book. He was greatly interested in the Indians, specially in the courteous Massasoit. He became governor and was three times in office. Governor John Winthrop (1588-1649), also recorded doings colonial. He was an aristocratic Englishman of marked wisdom, who, having been elected in England as Puritan leader of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, set sail with his charter and about a thousand followers, in 1630. They settled on the site of modern Boston. Governor Winthrop, the leading spirit, was historian. His noted "Journal," called "A History of New England," was a faithful reflection of the life of the country. It is in a smoother, more polished style, but not so picturesque as that of Governor Bradford. It began before leaving England and was continued forty years. All these antiquated chronicles-important though they be in keeping alive our history would prove tedious reading now-a-days; but Hawthorne, Longfellow and Whittier, by their magic touch, have transformed some of them into unforgettable tales. "A rock in the wilderness welcomed our sires, |