Thrusting itself up into view through the drift of a later day, it must
not be confounded with other growths nourished only by that more recent
deposit; though the surface-drift had of course its own weighty
influence in the nourishment of it. The artistic results of a period of
action must sometimes be looked for at a point of time long subsequent,
and this was especially sure to be so in the first phases of New England
civilization. The settlers in this region, in addition to the burdens
and obstacles proper to pioneers, had to deal with the cares of forming
a model state and of laying out for posterity a straight and solid path
in which it might walk with due rectitude. All this was in itself an
ample enough subject to occupy their powerful imaginations. They were
enacting a kind of sacred epic, the dangers and the dignity and
exaltation of which they felt most fervently. The Bible, the Bay Psalm
Book, Bunyan, and Milton, the poems of George Wither, Baxter's Saint's
Rest, and some controversial pamphlets, would suffice to appease
whatever yearnings the immense experiment of their lives failed to
satisfy. Gradually, of course, the native press and new-comers from
England multiplied books in a community which held letters in unusual
reverence. But the continuous work of subduing a new country, the
dependence upon the mother-land for general literature, and finally the
excitements of the Revolutionary period, deferred the opportunity for
any aesthetic expression of the forces that had been at work here ever
since Winthrop stepped from the Arbella on to the shore of the New
World, with noble manliness and sturdy statesmanship enough in him to
uphold the whole future of a great people.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25