tial progress of civilization, there is still a sense in which it may be said, there is nothing new under the sun. The philosopher of a century hence will puzzle over some of the problems of to-day, precisely as though Emerson, Fourier, Parker and Brownson had never existed.

The Magistrates of the Bay received no compensation for many years; never more than enough to pay travelling expenses. Tea Rooms, Contingent Expenses, and other plausible modes of covering appropriations for personal comforts, had not then been invented. They did not know how to derive revenue from the sale of ferry slips, for the only profitable ferry right was given to aid the infant college at Cambridge. They could not expect a percentage on land sales, for to the settler,

"The world was all before him where to choose."

They took nothing from paving contracts, for if the stumps were dug up, and the boulders rolled out of the road, it was all the hard-working pioneers could accomplish. Even then some towns were sharply enjoined to "mend their ways" many times before they obeyed. But, after sixteen years' service, the members of the Court ventured to ask in foro conscientiæ for reasonable pay; and they intimated that it was nothing less than the religious duty of the governed. We insert the application of the Deputies, similar to that of the Magistrates, made at the same session; and only regret that neither were of any avail. The people, doubtless, thought the honor of office to be its proper and sufficient reward.

"It is ordred that it shall & may be lawfull for ye Deputies of this howse to aduise & consultt wth theire Elders & ffreemen, whoe are desired to take it into serious consideraçon, whether God doe not expect that all ye inhabitants of this Colony alowe, as to theire magsts, soe to all other yt are called to Country service, porçonable alowance & mayntenance answerable to theire seu'all places & imploymts, annually or otherwise, & uppon wt grounds; & they are further desired to send in their thoughts & determinaçons in wrighteinge at ye next gen'all Courte."-Vol. 3. 1644.

In criminal proceedings the Court exercised unlimited power. From blasphemy and heresy down to petty larceny or breaches of the sumptuary laws, every offence was dealt with; and where positive statutes were wanting, the laws of Moses were ready to supply the deficiency. Often the prisoner, against whom a case could not be clearly made out, was either punished for an offence of a minor grade, or dismissed under bonds, or with a reprimand. Thus

"John Davies for his grosse offences in attempting lewdnes wth divers woomen, was sentenced to bee severely whiped both heare and at Ipswich, & to weare the letter V upon his breast upon his uppermost garment untill the court do discharge him." -Vol. 1. 238. 1638. O. S.

"Robte Coles is ffined VI. & enioyned to stand wth a white sheete of pa on his back wherein A DRUNKARD shal be written in greate l'res & to stand therewth soe long as the Court thinks meete, for abuseing himselfe shamefully wth drinke * * * * & othr misdemeans."-Vol. 1. 102. 1633.

This sentence, as might have been expected, produced only a temporary effect; for, but a short time after, we find him again before the Court, when the following order was passed.

"It is ordered that Robte Coles, for drunkenes by him comitted att Roxbury, shalbe disfranchized, weare about his necke & so to hange upon his outward garmt, a D made of redd cloath & sett upon white, to contynue this for a yeare, and not to leave it of att any tyme when hee comes amongst company, under penalty," &c.-Vol. 1. 108. 1633.

One Richard Wilson, a servant, for theft was sentenced to three years additional service, and to wear a T upon his outer garment.

Sometimes the punishments were yet more whimsical. Witness the following, upon one of the officers of the Fort.

"It is ordered that Srieant Perkins shall carry 40 turfs to the ffort, as a punishmt for drunkenes by him comitted."-Vol. 1. 103. 1633.

"Edward Palmer, for his extortion, takeing £1. 13s. 7d. for the plank wood work of Boston stocks, is fined 5l. & censured to bee set an houre in the stocks.”—Vol. 1. 250. 1639.

One feels a sort of satisfaction in this sentence;

"For 'tis the sport, to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard."

The common penalty for swearing or railing was putting the offender's tongue in a cleft stick; a very painful as well as humiliating punishment.-Thus:

"Elisabeth, the wife of Thomas Aplegate, was censured to stand wth her tongue in a cleft stick, for swearing, railing and revileing."-Vol. 1. 178. 1636.

Robert Shorthose, for swearing by the bloud of God, was sentenced to have his tongue put into a cleft stick, and to stand so by the space of haulfe an houre."-Vol. 1. 178. 1636.

It is to be lamented that modern innovations have rendered it so difficult to visit medical quackery with the punishment it deserves. The newspapers are so burdened with the advertisements of drugmongers, that a foreigner might reasonably suppose that Americans breakfast upon pills, take lotions instead of baths, bitters for juleps, and after dinner fortify against indigestion with "pepsin." Our fathers, good men, did not let empirics throw children into epilepsy, nor sell molasses-and-water for sarsaparilla, with impunity; e. g.

*

Nich: Knopp is fyned Vl., for takeing upon him to cure the scurvey by a water of noe worth nor value, which be solde att a very dear rate, to be imprisoned till hee pay his ffyne or give securytie for it, or els to be whipped, and shalbe lyable to any mans acçon of whome hee hath receaued money for the sd. water."-Vol. 1. 67. 1630.

The distinctions in society, as before intimated, were somewhat broadly marked. At a later period, it was customary in every congregation to have the seats in the meeting-house assigned once a year to the people according to their rank; this was termed "seating the meeting." Magistrates and others in official station, the military, and persons of good families or estates, were scrupulously designated by their appropriate titles. We insert some of the names of the officers chosen in 1646; a random specimen.

"John Winthrop, sen. Esqr, Gou'n' Thomas Dudley, Esqr, Dept Gou'n John Endecott, Esqr, Assistant. Herbert Pelham, Esq, Assistant. Increase Nowell, gent, Assistant and Secretary.

Wm. Pinchon, gent, Assistant.

Mr. Rich: Russell, Treasurer.

Capt. Wm. Hauthorne is chosen speaker of the howse of Deputs for this session."vol. 3. 63. 1646.

The names of HAWTHORNE and PYNCHON will be at once linked together in the reader's mind. The ancestor of our most gifted novelist, and the founder of the family whose name is preserved in the "House of Seven Gables,” could hardly have dreamed of the tie that has since joined them so indissolubly.

The appellation "Mr." though not the highest, was still a very respectable one.

A curious instance occurs where the deprivation of this prefix was considered a sufficient punishment for theft; while the accessories, who were of the lower class, having neither dignity to lose, nor money to atone for their crime, had to submit their backs to the constable's whip. Though it has been printed before, (Hutchinson's Hist. Mass.,) it may not be amiss to insert it here.

"It is ordered that Josias Plastowe shall (for stealing 4 basketts of corne from the Indians) returne them 8 basketts againe, be ffined Vl. and hereafter to be called by the name of Josias, and not Mr. as form'ly hee used to be, and that Willam Buckland and Tho: Andrewe shalbe whipped for being accessary to the same offence. Vol. 1. 83. 1631.

The most respectful term which could be applied to the untitled was, "Goodman," or "Goodwife;" in the latter generally abbreviated to "Goody,"-very suggestive of red cloaks, broom-handles, and other appliances of witchcraft. Thus:

Gooddy ffinch was censured to bee severely whiped to morrow, and so kept in prison."-Vol. 1. 282. 1640.

A variety of admonitions, sentences, &c. are given, to illustrate more fully the minute surveillance exercised in regard to morals and manners.

"John Stone and his wife were admonished to make biger bread, and to take heede of offending by makeing too little bread hereafter."Vol. 1. 265. 1639.

"Willi: Wake was counselled to go whom to his wife, and upon his Pmise so to do, his repentance and testimony of his good behavior hee was discharged."-Vol. 1. 294. 1640.

"Rich'd Hollingsworth, for prophaning the saboth in travelling, was censured to bee set in the stocks upon a lecture day at Salem."-Vol. 1. 237. 1637.

Benjamin Hubberd was also solemly admonished of his failing for being in company wth James Browne and the rest, and often drinking of the strong water bottle wth them, and not re@ving them."-Vol. 1. 198. 1637.

"James Davies, for his unquietness wth his wife, was enioyned to appear at the next Court of Assistants."-Vol. 1. 282. 1640.

"Thomas Makepeace, because of his novile disposition, was informed, wee were weary of him unlesse he reforme."-Vol. 1. 240. 1638.

"Ezekiel Holliman, appearing upon sumons, because hee did not frequent the publike assemblyes, and for seduceing many, hee was referd by the Court to the ministers for conviction."-Vol. 1. 216. 1637.

The Court, with commendable liberality, were unwilling that a forsaken woman should always remain in widowhood. In

the following instance, one would think the period quite long enough.

"Mris Dorothy Pester, whose husband went into England some ten yeares since, and was never to this day heard of, uppon her petition to this Court, hath liberty granted her to marry when God by his vidence shall afford her an Oppertunitie."Vol. 3. 352. 1652.

Whether the patient Dorothy ever found her "Oppertunitie," the records do not tell.

Daniel Fairfield, a notorious offender against morality, was most severely, and (if mutilation were ever justifiable) most justly punished by whipping, slitting his nose, &c. He likewise wore a rope two or three feet long round his neck for several years. His wife, with a forgiving affection which even the wretched husband must have wondered at, petitioned the Court, session after session, for permission to drop the ignominious badge; and, at last, having been successful in that, she asked and obtained leave to emigrate. This is the answer of the Court:

"Upon the petition of Elisa: ffairefeild, it is granted that her husband, she & their children [may] depart out of this Jurisdiction unto such other parts of the world as it shall please God to dispose."-Vol. 2. 232.

1649.

The curtness of this license would indicate that the magistrates were quite as well pleased with the departure as the heart-sick woman herself.

The extreme severity with which the laws were executed at first seems to have relaxed somewhat about 1653. Among the more zealous religionists, the lamentations for the decline of piety were loud and frequent. At length the General Court took up the matter, and referred the whole subject of the dissoluteness of the times to a special committee, with instructions to present a plan for thorough reformation. A long report was made by the committee, and is now on file, Mass. Archives, vol. 10., fol. 338. 1654. It recommends reform under fourteen distinct heads. The preamble reads thus:

Concearning many Evells growing amongst us of sundry kinds, we conceaue ye Lord calls us to soleme and serious humilliation, yt euells may be discouered and prvented, ye lord therin appearing eying the many mercyes wee haue receued, and our unsutableness thereunto."

Among the subjects specially mentioned, are, Fasts, public and private, more liberal support of the Ministry, a House of Correction for the idle and dissolute, punishment of aggressive heretics, pirates, slanderers, and the improvement of schools. VOL. II.-10

Three items of the proposed great reformation we subjoin :

"8. Wheras much Grieff lyeth on ye spirits of many godly, & much dishonor redounds unto God, by sleepinesse of sons, in ye publique ordinances of Christ, wee conceaue it meet from this Court bee declared, yt It is ye duty of such sons, who, while ye ordinances of Christ are dispensing, shal sit neere such sons, to awaken ym, and, In case they shal bee offended, to Admonish ym priuatly. If, notwithstanding, they shall sist therin versely, yn to Complagne of ym to ye magistrat or commission or Townsmen of yt Towne, who are sharply to admonish ym. This order to bee publiquely posted In some open place of ye meetinghouse by ye Constable of yt Towne."

"9. That, In all Elections wherein ffreemen and non ffreemen voat, Its conceaued meet yt, whereas Scotch, seruants, Irish, negers, and sons under one and twenty years have liberty to voate, yt ffreemen who undergoe all ye burdens of this Com'welth should haue a double voate."

10. This Court considering ye Cruel and malignant spirrit yt haue from tyme to tyme been manifest in ye Irish Nation against ye English, doe hereby declare thyr Phibition of any Irish men, women or childrens being brought Into this Jurisdiction" &c.

At a later period, when a series of calamities overtook the Colony, communications came in from the country expressing very great concern at what were considered evident marks of the Divine displeasure. Whereupon a committee was formally appointed to consider the subject, and "to inquire into the causes of God's wrath!" The matter is too long and wordy to be quoted here.

It has been imagined by some that the Puritans, from their stern treatment of idleness and vice, were deficient in charity to the poor. But this was far from the fact. The unfortunate, whether from sickness or accident, never applied to the Court for aid in vain. The benefactions of that day were in far greater proportion to the slender resources of the colony, than are our boasted charities to the immense wealth we have accumulated. Nor were the recipients of charity herded like animals or criminals, and left to die without the presence of a friend to cheer the last moments of life. The order following, of which there are many parallels, will show the fact we have stated, as well as the simplicity of the times:

"It was ordered that Alexander Beck should have 24 bushels of corne for Mary Joanes for the time past, & for the time to come, a bushell of corne a weeke, & to have two blankets & a rug to keepe her warme."-Vol. 1. 295. 1640.

Corn in 1640 was worth 4s. sterling, equal to nearly $2 50 now.

The following order contains the first notice of witchcraft upon the records of the General Court, although some faint foreshadowing of its terrible career was observed at Springfield a year or two previous.

"The Corte desire the Course wch hath been taken in England for discoury of

witches, by watching them a certaine time: It is orderd that the best & surest way may be forthwth be put in practice, to begin this night if it may be, being the 18th of the 3rd m°, [May,] & that the husband may be confined to a private roome, & be also then watched."-Vol. 2. 203. 1648.

A further account of this remarkable superstition, as well as many other topics, must be reserved for another article.

MY

Y DEAR SIR,-Do people in general, upon this side of the great water, read Homer? Virgil, I know, in some parts of the Union, is a lady's book; nor is there, I think, any ancient author that better deserves the honor. But the man's book, Homer? It is not every boy that learns Greek; and not all who learn Greek read through the whole forty-eight books of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Is Pope much studied? I should fancy not: and, indeed, though one is glad to hear any one say that he has, in the past tense, read that ingenious composition, it is not easy to bid any one, in the future, go and read it. And, if not Pope, whom can we recommend? Chapman is barbarous, dissonant, obsolete, incorrect. In Hobbes there are two good lines, well known, but they cannot be repeated too often

"And like a star upon her bosom, lay

His beautiful and shining golden head.” (They are of Astyanax in the arms of his mother; and how that first of English prosaists was inspired with them remains a problem to all generations.) Cowper, who could read, however much enjoined to it? In short there neither is, nor has been, nor in all probability ever will be, any thing like a translation. And the whole Anglo-Saxon world of the future will, it is greatly to be feared, go forth upon its way, clearing forests, building clippers, weaving calicoes, and annexing Mexicos, accomplishing its natural manifest destiny, and subsiding into its primitive aboriginal ignorance. Accomplishing our manifest destiny! to be, that is, the "hewers of wood and drawers of water to the human race in general; and then, peradventure, when the wood has all been hewn, and the water drawn, to cease to exist, to be effaced from the earth we have subdued—

"Fear no more the heat of the sun,
Nor the furious winter's rages,
Thou thine earthly task hast done,
Homeward gone, and ta'en thy wages.

To cease to exist, to vanish, to give place, in short, to some nobler kind of men, in whose melodious and flexible form of speech the old Homer will have a chance of reappearing unimpaired, or possibly some new Homer singing the wrath of another Achilles and the wanderings of a wiser Ulysses.

Fiat voluntas! Let us go forward to our manifest destiny with content, or at least resignation, and bravely fill up the trench, which our nobler successors may thus be able to pass.

In the mean time, various attempts in Blackwood's Magazine, and elsewhere, have been made in the last few years at rendering Homer in modern English hexameter verse. We venture to pronounce them unsuccessful. It is not an easy thing to make readable English hexameters at all; not an easy thing even in the freedom of original composition, but a very hard one, indeed, amid the restrictions of faithful translation. Mr. Longfellow has gained, and has charmed, has instructed in some degree, and attuned the ears of his countrymen and countrywomen (in literature we may be allowed to say), upon both sides of the Atlantic, to the flow and cadence of this hitherto unacceptable measure. Yet, the success of Evangeline was owing, not more, we think, to the author's practised skill in versification than to his judgment in the choice of his material. Even his powers, we believe, would fail to obtain a wide popularity for a translation even from a language so nearly akin to our own as the German. In Greek, where grammar, inflection, intonation, idiom, habit, character, and genius are all most alien, the task is very much more hopeless.

Moreover, in another point, it may be right to turn the Louise of Voss, and the Herman and Dorothea of Goethe into corresponding modern so-called hexameters. If the verse is clumsy in our

rendering, so was it to begin with in the original. If no high degree of elegance is attained, no high degree of elegance was there to be lost.

But in Greek there seems really hardly a reason for selecting this in preference to some readier, more native and popular form of verse. Certainly the easy flowing couplets of Chaucer, the melodious blank verse of Shakspeare, or some improved variety of ballad metre, such as Mr. Frere used in translating the Cid, would be, on the whole, not less like the original music of the Iliad and Odyssey than that which we listen to with pleasure in Evangeline, and read without much trouble in the Herman and Dorothea. Homer's rounding line, and Virgil's smooth verse, were both of them (after more puzzling about it than the matter deserves, I have convinced myself) totally unlike those lengthy, straggling, irregular, uncertain slips of prose mesurée which we find it so hard to measure, so easy to read in half-a-dozen ways, without any assurance of the right one, and which, since the days of Voss, the Gothic nations consider analogous to classic hexameter.

Lend me, if you can spare them for a moment or two, my dear sir, your ears, and tell me, honor bright, is

Conticuere omnes, intentique ora tenebant the same thing as

Hab' ich den Markt und die Strasse doch nicht so einsam geseben.

Were I to interpolate in a smooth passage of Evangeline a verse from the Georgics or the Æneid, would they go together?

Is the following a metrical sequence: Thus, in the ancient time the smooth Virgilian verses Fell on the listening ear of the Roman princes and people.

Ut belli signum Laurenti Turnus ab arco.

There is one line, one example of the smooth Virgilian verses, which perhaps Mr. Longfellow would have allowed himself to use, and his readers consented to accept, as a real hexameter.

Spargens humida mella soporiferumque papaver, might, perhaps, have been no more objected to than

Tous les Bourgeois de Chartres et le carillon de Dunkerque.

Yet even this most exceptionable form, with its special aim at expressing, by an adaptation of sound to sense, the

Scattering of liquid honeys and soporiferous poppy, is a model of condensation, brevity, smoothness, and netteté, compared with that sprawling bit of rhythmical prose into which I have turned it.

But, we are going to be learned, my dear sir; so I release your kind ears, and

beg you will no longer trouble either yourself or them-but, some one, I foresee, of the numerous well-instructed future readers of this private correspondence will interpose with his or her objection, and will tell me, You read your Latin verse wrongly, you don't put the stress upon the ictus,-you should pronounce Virgil like Evangeline, Evangeline is the true hexameter; in Virgil the colloquial accent which you follow was lost in the accent of verse. The Romans of old read it, not Ut bélli sígnum Laurénti Túrnus ab árco,

but

Ut bellí signúm.

O dear! and can you, courteous and wellinstructed reader, positively read your Georgics or Æneid in that way? Do you, as a habit, scan as you go along? Do you not feel it very awkward, must not the Romans also have felt it rather awkward, to pass so continually and violently from the ordinary to the sing-song accentuation? And if, as I think you must allow, there was some awkwardness in it, why is it that Virgil, and the other good versifiers, so constantly prefer that form of verse in which this awkwardness most appears? Why is

Spárgens húmida mélla, soporiférúmque papáver, where there is no such difficulty, a rare form, and "Ut bélli sígnum," where there is, a common and favorite one? Do you know? I shall venture to assert that in the Latin language, the system of accentuation was this, which enjoined the awkwardness you complain of; the separation, in general, of the colloquial and the metrical accent, the very opposite of that which we observe, who, unless the two coincide, think the verse bad. Enough of this, however.

་

Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past-come back, my dear sir, we will talk no more prosody-only just allow me to recite to you a few verses of metaphrase, as they used to say, from the Odyssey; constructed as nearly as may be upon the ancient principle; quantity, so far as, in our forward-rushing, consonantcrushing, Anglo-savage enunciation-long and short can in any kind be detected, quantity attended to in the first place, and care also bestowed, in the second, to have the natural accents very frequently laid upon syllables which the metrical reading depresses.

The aged Nestor, sitting among his sons at Pylos, is telling Telemachus, who has come from Ithaca to ask tidings of his father, how, after the taking of Troy, the insolence and violence of the Achæans called down upon them the displeasure of the Father of the Gods and the stern blue