the first cattle into New England.' He made voyages to England and other places for the benefit of the Plymouth colony, and for private commercial pursuits; and, in 1633, was elected governor. Twice, subsequently, he was elected chief magistrate of the colony, when Bradford declined serving, and always performed his duties with great satisfaction to his constituents. He made many coast voyages, even as far south as Manhattan, for trading purposes; and in 1635, went to England again, when, on a charge of performing illegal clerical services at Plymouth, made by the mendacious Thomas Morton, he was imprisoned four months. There, and during a subsequent visit to his native country, he was active in founding a society for propagating the gospel in New England, which was incorporated in 1649. He was so highly esteemed in his native country, that public employments were thrust upon him, and he never returned to America. He was appointed a commissioner to determine the amount of the restitution to be made to England, by Denmark, for marine spoliations; and in 1655, Cromwell appointed him the first of three commissioners to superintend an expedition against the Spaniards in the West Indies, in which admiral Penn, father of William, was a conspicuous actor. Governor Winslow accompanied the expedition. It failed to accomplish its object; and while the fleet was passing between the islands of St. Domingo and Jamaica, he died of a fever, on the 8th of May, 1655, at the age of sixty years. Mr. Winslow's wife was among those of the May Flower, who died during the Winter and Spring of 1621. William White also died at about the same time, and within two months afterward Winslow and White's widow were married. This was the first marriage of Europeans in New England. Mrs. Winslow was not only the first bride, but the mother of the first white child born in New England, her son, Peregrine White, having been born on board the May Flower while that vessel lay anchored in Cape Cod Bay.

WILLIAM PENN.

N glorious contrast with the inhumanity of Spaniards, Frenchmen, and many Englishmen, stands the record on History's tablet of the kindness and justice toward the feeble Indian, of the founder of Pennsylvania.

"Thou'lt find," said the Quaker, "in me and mine,
But friends and brothers to thee and to thine,

Who abuse no power, and admit no line

'Twixt the red man and the white."

And bright was the spot where the Quaker came
To leave his hat, his drab, and his name,

That will sweetly sound from the trump of Fame,

'Till its final blast shall die.-HANNAH F. GOULD.

William Penn was born in the city of London, on the 14th of October, 1644, and was educated at Oxford. His father was the eminent admiral Penn, a great favorite of royalty. William was remarkable, in early youth, for brilliant talent and unaffected piety. While yet a student he heard one of the new sect of Quakers preach, and, with other students, became deeply impressed with the evangelical truths which they uttered. He, with several others, withdrew from the Established Church, worshipped by themselves, and for non-conformity were expelled from the college. Penn's father sought, in vain, to reclaim him; and when, at length, he refused to take off his hat in the presence of the admiral, and

1. Horses were not introduced until 1644. The people often rode on bulls. It is said that when John Alden went to be married to Priscilla Mullins, he covered his bull with a handsome cloth. On his return, he seated his bride on the animal's back, and he led him by a rope fastened to a ring in his nose.

AsmeBenn

even of the king, he was expelled from the parental roof. He was sent to gay France, where he became a polished gentleman after a residence of two years; and on his return he studied law in London until the appearance of the great plague in 1665. He was sent to Ireland in 1666, to manage an estate there belonging to his father, but was soon recalled, because he associated with Quakers. Again expelled from his father's house, he became an itinerant Quaker preacher, made many proselytes, suffered revilings and imprisonments "for conscience sake," and at the age of twenty-four years, wrote his celebrated work, entitled No Cross, no Crown, while in prison because of his non-conformity to the Church of England. He was released in 1670, and soon afterward became possessor of the large estates of his father, who died that year. He continued to write and preach in defence of his sect, and went to Holland and Germany, for that purpose, in 1677.

In March, 1681, Penn procured from Charles the Second, a grant of the territory in America which yet bears his name; and two years afterward he visited the colony which he had established there. He founded Philadelphia-city of brotherly love toward the close of the same year; and within twenty-four months afterward, two thousand settlers were planting their homes there. Penn returned to England in 1684, and through his influence with the king, obtained

the release of thirteen hundred Quakers, then in prison. Because of his personal friendship toward James, the successor of Charles (who was driven from the throne by the revolution of 1688, and had his place filled by his daughter, Mary, and William, Prince of Orange), he was suspected of adherence to the fallen monarch, and was imprisoned, and deprived of his proprietary rights. These were restored to him in 1694; and in 1699, he again visited his American colony. He remained in Pennsylvania until 1701, when he hastened to England to cppose a parliamentary proposition to abolish all proprietary governments in America. He never returned. In 1712, he was prostrated by a paralytic disorder. It terminated his life on the 30th of July, 1718, at the age of seventyfour years. Penn was greatly beloved by the Indians; and it is worthy of remark that not a drop of Quaker's blood was ever shed by the savages.

THE

THOMAS HOOKER.

HE true heroes of America are those who, from time to time, have left the comforts of civilized life and planted the seeds of new states deep in the wilderness. Among the remarkable men of that stamp was the Reverend Thomas Hooker, the first minister of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and one of the pioneer settlers in Connecticut. He was born in Leicestershire, England, in 1586, and was educated in Emanuel College, Cambridge. He began his labors as a Christian minister at about the time of the death of James the First, when Archbishop Laud began to harass the non-conformists. In 1630, Mr. Hooker was silenced, because of his non-conformity to the Established Church, and he founded a grammar school at Chelmsford. His influence was great; and falling under the ban of Laud, he was obliged to fly to Holland, where he became an assistant minister to Dr. Ames, both at Delft and Rotterdam. He came to America with the Reverend Mr. Cotton, in 1633, and was made pastor of the church at Cambridge in the Autumn of that year.

In 1636, this "light of the western churches," with other ministers, their families and flocks, in all about one hundred, left the vicinity of Boston for the Connecticut valley, where the English had already planted settlements. It was a toilsome journey through the swamps and forests. They took quite a number of cows with them. These browsed upon the shrubs and grazed in swamp borders, and their milk afforded subsistence for the wanderers. The journey was made in the pleasant month of June, and on the 4th of July they reached the flowery banks of the Connecticut, and received the hearty greetings of welcome of the little band of settlers who were seated on the site of the present city of Hartford. There, in the little meeting-house already built, Mr. Hooker preached when the Sabbath came, and administered the sacrament of the Lord's Supper to all. A greater portion of Mr. Hooker's followers settled at Hartford, while some chose Wethersfield for a residence; and others, from Roxbury, went up the river twenty miles, and founded Springfield.

Mr. Hooker was one of the most powerful preachers of his time, and wrote much and well, on religious subjects. While preaching in the great church of Leicester, before he left England, one of the magistrates of the town sent a fiddler to the church-yard to disturb the worship. Mr. Hooker's powerful voice not only drowned the music, but it attracted the fiddler to the church door. He listened to the great truths uttered, and became converted. Mr. Hooker was a man of great benevolence, and in every sphere of life he was eminently useful. He died at Hartford, of an epidemic fever, on the 7th of July, 1647, at the age of sixty-one years.

SOME

OME of the early New England divines, as well as the magistrates, were exceedingly superstitious, while their piety and general good sense could not be doubted. Cotton Mather, one of the earliest of American-born clergymen, was a prominent specimen of the kind of men alluded to. He was born in Boston, on the 12th of February, 1663, and was educated at Harvard College, where he was graduated at the early age of sixteen years. He was so expert in learning, that before he was nineteen years old, the degree of Master of Arts was conferred upon him, by the college. At the age of twenty-two years, he was ordained a gospel minister, and became the assistant of his father, Increase Mather. Preaching and authorship were the joint professions of his life, and he excelled all others, of his time, in both. He became master of several languages, and was considered a prodigy of learning. He held a fluent pen, yet his writings were not fitted for immortality. They lacked solidity and that true genius which is undying. Many of his productions are already forgotten, and none but his Magnalia will probably "live forever." Its extravagances form its chief element of vitality. With all his learning, Dr. Mather was a man of narrow views, a conceited heart, and unsound judgment. He was a firm believer in witchcraft, and probably did more than any other man to promote the spread of that fearful delusion, known in history as Salem Witchcraft'. He wrote a book 1. A belief in wi.chcraft was almost universal, at that time. It had produced terrible tragedies on the

on the subject, and stimulated the authorities to prosecute all suspected persons. Several years before, his father had published an account of all the supposed cases of witchcraft in New England, under the title of "Remarkable Provi dences," which directed public attention to the subject. After the delusion had passed away, Cotton Mather's credulity was exposed by a man named Calef, in a series of letters. Mather sneered at him at first, but when Calef laid his blows on thick and fast, the Doctor called him "a coal from hell," and prosecuted him for slander. The suit was wisely withdrawn.

With all his vagaries and folly, Dr. Mather exhibited much good sense. Dr. Franklin has thus illustrated the fact, in a letter to Mr. Mather's son, Samuel, whose house and fine library were consumed at Charlestown during the battle on Breed's Hill, in 1775. "The last time I saw your father was in the beginning of 1724, when I visited him after my first trip to Pennsylvania. He received me in his library; and on my taking leave, showed me a shorter way out of the house through a narrow passage, which was crossed by a beam overhead. We were still talking as I withdrew, he accompanying me behind, and I turning partly towards him, when he said hastily, 'Stoop! stoop!' I did not understand him until I felt my head hit against the beam. He was a man that never missed an occasion of giving instruction, and upon this he said to me, 'You are young, and have the world before you; stoop as you go through it, and you will escape many hard thumps.' This advice, thus beat into my head, has frequently been of use to me; and I often think of it when I see pride mortified, and misfortunes brought upon people by carrying their heads too high."

Cotton Mather married three times, and had fifteen children. He died on the 13th of February, 1728, at the age of sixty-five years.

MILES

JOHN MASON.

[ILES STANDISH is called the "hero of New England" because of priority. There were other men of that olden time who were greater "heroes" than he, when measured by the common standard. John Mason was a greater "hero" than Standish, for he caused the destruction of more Indians than his rival for the palm. He was born in England about the year 1600. He was a soldier by profession, and had practiced his murderous art in that cock-pit of Europe, the Netherlands. In 1630, he came to America, and was one of the original settlers at Dorchester. He went to the Connecticut Valley in 1635, and assisted in founding a settlement at Windsor. The peace of the little colony was soon disturbed by the depredations of the powerful Pequods, whose chief rendezvous was between the Thames and Mystic rivers. They believed the white people to be friendly to their enemies, the Mohegans and Narragansets, and they had resolved to exterminate them. They kidnapped children, stole cattle, and finally made murderous attacks upon the outskirts of the settlement at Saybrook, near the mouth of the Connecticut river. The danger became imminent, and Captain Mason went down to Saybrook, with some followers, to reinforce and command the garrison of the little fort there.

In the Spring of 1637, the settlers in the Connecticut Valley declared war

continent of Europe, nearly two hundred years before. Within fifty or sixty years, during the sixteenth century, more than one hundred thousand persons accused of witchcraft, perished in the flames, in Germany alone. The delusion prevailed in Massachusetts for more than six months, in 1692; and during that time, twenty persons suffered death, fifty-five were tortured or frightened into a confession of witchcraft, and over one hundred were imprisoned. The delusion commenced at Danvers, and spread over a great extent of country in the vicinity of Boston.