that little damage was done by the guns across the bay. An attack in the rear of the town seemed impossible on account of a large swamp which lay in that direction; but the resolute soldiers of New England lashed their heavy guns upon sledges, and dragged them through the marsh to a tract of solid ground within two hundred yards of the enemy's bastions. Notwithstanding the advantage of this position, the walls of the fort stood firm, and the siege progressed slowly.

On the 18th of May a French ship of sixty-four guns, laden with stores for the garrison, was captured by Warren's fleet. The French were greatly discouraged by this event, and the defence grew feeble. The English were correspondingly elated with the prospect of success. On the 26th of the month an effort was made to capture the French battery in the harbor. A company of daring volunteers undertook the hazardous enterprise by night. Embarking in boats, they drew near the island where the battery was planted, but were discovered and repulsed with the loss of a hundred and seventy-six men. It was now determined to carry the town by storm. The assault was set for the 18th of June; but on the day previous the desponding garrison sent out a flag of truce; terms of capitulation were proposed and accepted, and the English flag rose above the conquered fortress.

By the terms of this surrender not only Louisburg, but the whole of Cape Breton, was given up to England. The rejoicing at Boston and throughout the colonies was only equaled by the indignation and alarm of the French government. Louisburg must be retaken at all hazards, said the ministers of France. For Battery this purpose a powerful fleet, under command of Duke d'Anville, was sent out in the following year. Before reaching America the duke died of a pestilence. His successor went mad and killed himself. Storms and shipwrecks and disasters drove the ill

fated expedition to utter ruin. The renewal of the enterprise, in 1747, was attended with like misfortune. Commodores Warren and Anson overtook the French squadron and compelled a humiliating surrender.

In 1748, a treaty of peace was concluded at Aix-la-Chapelle, a town of Western Germany. After eight years of devastating warfare, nothing was gained but a mutual restoration of conquests. By the terms of settlement, Cape Breton was surrendered to France. With grief and

shame the fishermen and farmers of New England saw the island which had been subdued by their valor restored to their enemies. Of all the disputed boundary-lines between the French and English colonies in America, not a single one was settled by this treaty. The European nations had exhausted themselves with fighting; what cared they for the welfare of distant and feeble provinces? The real war between France and England for colonial supremacy in the West was yet to be fought. Within six years after the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, the two great powers were involved in the final and decisive conflict.

The history of Massachusetts has now been traced through a period of a hundred and thirty years. A few words on THE CHARACTER OF THE PURITANS may be appropriately added. They were in the beginning a vigorous and hardy people, firm-set in the principles of honesty and the practices of virtue. They were sober, industrious, frugal; resolute, zealous and steadfast. They esteemed honor above preferment, and truth more than riches. Loving home and native land, they left both for the sake of freedom; and finding freedom, they cherished it with the zeal and devotion of martyrs. Without influence, they became influential; without encouragement, great. Despised and mocked and hated, they rose above their revilers. In the school of evil fortune they gained the discipline of patience. Suffering without cause brought resignation without despair. Themselves the victims of persecution, they became the founders of a colony-a commonwealth-a nation. They were the children of adversity and the fathers of renown.

The gaze of the Puritan was turned ever to posterity. He believed in the future. His affections and hopes were with the coming ages. For his children he toiled and sacrificed; for them the energies of his life were cheerfully exhausted. The system of free schools is the enduring monument of his love and devotion. The printing-press is his memorial. Almshouses and asylums are the tokens of his care for the unfortunate. With him the outcast found sympathy, and the wanderer a home. He was the earliest champion of civil rights, and the builder of THE UNION. The fathers of New England have been accused of bigotry. The charge is true: it is the background of the picture. In matters of religion they were intolerant and superstitious. Their religious faith was gloomy and foreboding. Human life was deemed a sad and miserable journey. To be mistaken was to sin. To fail in trifling ceremonies was reckoned a grievous crime. In the shadow of such belief the people became austere and melancholy. Escaping from the splendid formality of the Episcopal Church, they set up a colder and severer form of worship; and the form was made like iron. Dissenters themselves, they could not

tolerate the dissent of others. To restrain and punish error seemed right and necessary. Williams and Hutchinson were banished; the Quakers were persecuted and the witches hanged. But Puritanism contained within itself the power to correct its own abuses. Within the austere and gloomy fabric dwelt the very soul and genius of FREE THOUGHT. Under the ice-bound rigors of the faith flowed a current which no fatalism could congeal, no superstition poison. The heart of a mighty, tumultuous, liberty-loving life throbbed within the cold, stiff body of formalism. A powerful vitality, which no disaster could subdue, no persecution quench, warmed and energized and quickened. The tyranny of Phipps, the malice of Parris, and the bigotry of Mather are far outweighed by the sacrifices of Winthrop, the beneficence of Harvard, and the virtues of Sir Henry Vane. The evils of the sys

tem may well be forgotten in the glory of its achievements Without the Puritans, America would have been a delusion and liberty only a

name.

ILL

CHAPTER XVIII.

NEW YORK.-SETTLEMENT.

LLUSTRIOUS Sir Henry Hudson! Indomitable explorer, dauntless cavalier of the ocean! Who so worthy to give a name to the great inland sea of the frozen North as he who gave his life in heroic combat with its terrors? Who so fit to become the father of a colony in the New World as he who braved its perils and revealed its mysteries? And where should the new State be planted unless by the broad haven-broadest and best on the American coast-and among the beautiful hills and landscapes

Where The Hudson came rolling through valleys a-smoke
From the lands of the Iroquois ?

It was the good fortune of the American colonies to be founded by men whose lives, like the setting suns of summer, cast behind them a long and glorious twilight. But for the name and genius of Hudson the province of New Netherland had never been.

For ten years after the founding of New Amsterdam the colony was governed by directors. These officers were appointed and sent

out by the Dutch East India Company, in accordance with the charter of that corporation. The settlement on Manhattan Island was as yet only a village of traders. Not until 1623 was an actual colony sent from Holland

to New Netherland. Two years previously, the Dutch West India Company had been organized, with the exclusive privilege of planting settlements in America. The charter of this company was granted for a period of twenty-four years, with the privilege of renewal; and the territory to be colonized extended from the Strait of Magellan to Hudson's Bay. Manhattan Island, with its cluster of

SIR HENRY HUDSON.

huts, passed at once under the control of the new corporation.

In April of 1623, the ship New Netherland, having on board a colony of thirty families, arrived at New Amsterdam. The colonists, called WALLOONS, were Dutch Protestant refugees from Flanders, in Belgium. They were of the same religious faith with the Huguenots of France, and came to America to find repose from the persecutions of their own country. Cornelius May was the leader of the company. The greater number of the new immigrants settled with their friends on Manhattan Island; but the captain, with a party of fifty, passing down the coast of New Jersey, entered and explored the Bay of Delaware. Sailing up the bay and river, the company landed on the eastern shore; here, at a point a few miles below Camden, where Timber Creek falls into the Delaware, a site was selected and a block-house built named Fort Nassau. The natives were won over by kindness; and when shortly after the fort was abandoned and the settlers returned to New Amsterdam, the Indians witnessed their departure with affectionate regret. In the same year Joris, another Dutch captain, ascended the Hudson to Castle Island,

where, nine years previously, Christianson had built the older Fort Nassau. A flood in the river had swept the island bare. Not deeming it prudent to restore the works in a place likely to be deluged, Joris sailed up stream a short distance and rebuilt the fortress on the present site of Albany. The name of this northern outpost was changed to Fort Orange; and here the eighteen families of Joris's company were permanently settled.

In 1624 civil government began in New Netherland. Cornelius May was first governor of the colony. His official duties, however, were only such as belonged to the superintendent of a trading-post. In the next year William Verhulst became director of the settlement. Herds of cattle, swine and sheep were brought over from Holland and distributed among the settlers. In January of 1626, Peter Minuit, of Wesel, was regularly appointed by the Dutch West India Company as governor of New Netherland. Until this time the natives had retained the ownership of Manhattan Island; but on Minuit's arrival, in May, an offer of purchase was made and accepted. The whole island, containing more than twenty thousand acres, was sold to the Dutch for twenty-four dollars. The southern point of land was selected as a site for fortifications; there a block-house was built and surrounded with a palisade. New Amsterdam was already a town of thirty houses. In the first year of Minuit's administration were begun the settlements of Wallabout and Brooklyn, on Long Island.

The Dutch of New Amsterdam and the Pilgrims of New Plymouth were early and fast friends. The Puritans themselves had but recently arrived from Holland, and could not forget the kind treatment which they had had in that country. They and the Walloons were alike exiles fleeing from persecution and tyranny. On two occasions, in 1627, a Dutch embassy was sent to Plymouth with an expression of good will. The English were cordially invited to remove without molestation to the more fertile valley of the Connecticut. Governor Bradford replied with words of cheer and sympathy. The Dutch were honestly advised of the claims of England to the country of the Hudson; and the people of New Netherland were cautioned to make good their titles by accepting new deeds from the council of Plymouth. A touch of jealousy was manifested when the Dutch were warned not to send their trading-boats into the Bay of Narragansett.

In 1628 the population of Manhattan numbered two hundred and seventy. The settlers devoted their whole energies to the fur-trade. Every bay, inlet and river between Rhode Island and the Delaware was visited by their vessels. The colony gave promise of rapid development