But among the hosts of New

The

credit they will command. And between these two classes is yet another, of which, on manifest principles of human nature, we presume there are some few specimens, but which it is harder to reduce to any precise description. There are young persons, more or less well inclined and well principled, who are yet impressible and movable, to almost any extent, by the power of sympathy. It is not merely calculation, it may be, much more, a mere foolish facility, which disposes them to adopt, wherever they go, the habits of thought as well as of speech and behaviour, which they find to prevail around them. This is not characteristically a New England frailty; the contrary, rather; it is but one of the endlessly diversified phases of the common human nature. England emigrants, it is to be supposed that some will be found affected by it. In such cases, there will be sometimes an extraordinarily sudden and marked transformation. Yankee youth, whom one meets in some remote city, or plantation, or wild, will be found as outrageously anti-New England, as the proselyte is warm against the principles he has forsaken, or the nouveau riche is inveterate against every thing which pertains to the shop. In certain visible symptoms, pertaining to the same disease, you have tolerably sure prognostics how such a person will speak of his home, before the subject has been introduced. If you remark, that whatever is peculiar in the forms of language of his new residence has been sedulously adopted, you may confidently augur that he has meant to make himself over again, merging all his Yankee identity in the process. If a dirk-hilt, or pistol handle, peeps from beneath his vest, (things which a decent man in New England would no sooner think of wearing, than he would of taking his walk with a four-pounder trailed behind him,) you may be sure that New England parsimony, aristocracy, bigotry, and the rest, will find no quarter at his hands. It will be of no use to tell him, that, whatever his new associates may think of his country, they will think none the better of him for so ready an adoption of their views concerning it. It will be all in vain, at present, to commend to his attention the universal concurrence in the truth of the homely maxim, that "it is an ill bird that defiles its own nest." You must wait. He is not to be despaired of. He may come to his wisdom, and his sense of character, yet; and then he will come, at the same time, to bitter humiliation and regret for the recreant nonsense

he has vented. If, in the mean while, the mother that bore him must be prejudiced by his abuse, her greatest grief, and wrong, and shame, are in the dismal spectacle of his folly.

We designed to speak further than we now can do, of Mr. Bradford's "History of Massachusetts for Two Hundred Years"; particularly with reference to its introduction, as a text-book, into our common schools. Besides being in form extremely convenient for that purpose, it is the work of a gentleman with whom our New England history has been the study of a life, and who, from the official relation which he long sustained, as Secretary of the Commonwealth, enjoyed peculiar advantages for its prosecution. Without saying that, in all respects, the work is all that could be desired for the purpose, we are sure, that, under the direction of competent instructers, it would render excellent service to our youth. At any rate, if this volume is not all that might be wished, let one be produced which would be. If need be, let the Commonwealth offer a prize, suitable to obtain a history for the schools, from the best mind which it can enlist in that important service. We find, in the Secretary's Abstract of School Returns for 1836, that in the schools of several towns, some history of the United States is studied, and in some Irving's "Life of Columbus "; while in only one, that of Scituate, have we remarked any mention of a history of Massachusetts as a text-book.* These things should be done, but the other should not be left undone. As far as public provision can effect it, Massachusetts should not suffer one of her children to leave her borders, or grow up within them, without knowing well the history, to the end of being the more imbued with the spirit, of his excellent birthplace.

The existing laws, which we perceive we have not fully described in the beginning of this article, are as follows. Towns consisting of 50, 100, 150, or 500 families, must support one or more common schools, for terms, in every year, the aggregate of which shall be 6, 12, 18, and 24 months respectively. Towns of 500 families, in addition to their Common Schools, must support, 10 months annually, a school where instruction shall be given in the History of the United States, book-keeping, surveying, geometry, and algebra. Towns of 4000 inhabitants must have their school of this latter class under the care of a master, able to teach Latin and Greek, general history, rhetoric, and logic.

ART. X.-CRITICAL NOTICES.

1.- The Compact, with the Charter and Laws of the Colony of New Plymouth; together with the Charter of the Council at Plymouth, and an Appendix, containing the Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of New England, and other valuable Documents. Published agreeably to a Resolve passed April 5, 1836. Under the Supervision of WILLIAM BRIGHAM, Counsellor at Law. pp. 357. Svo. Boston; Dutton & Wentworth, Printers to the State. 1836.

THE Legislature of Massachusetts has at various times ma ifested a very commendable desire to preserve the records and muniments of our forefathers, and to diffuse the knowledge of our colonial and provincial history. In the year 1814, they subscribed for six hundred copies of "Hubbard's History of New England from the Discovery to 1680," which, after lying in manuscript for upwards of a hundred and thirty years, was then for the first time published by the Massachusetts Historical Society, and furnished a copy of it to every town in the Commonwealth, including the District of Maine. In 1824 they purchased three hundred and fifty copies of Mr. Savage's invaluable edition of Governor Winthrop's History of New-England, to be distributed in like manner among the several towns of Massachusetts. Without this liberal and efficient aid, it may be questioned whether either of those important works would have appeared even to this day.

Again, in the year 1812, Hon. Nathan Dane, William Prescott, and Joseph Story were appointed a committee to collect the charters, and the public and general laws, of the colony and province of Massachusetts Bay. The result of their labors appeared in 1814, in a royal octavo volume of 868 pages, of which one thousand copies were printed. In 1818, the Rev. Dr. Freeman, of Boston, Samuel Davis, Esq., of Plymouth, and Benjamin R. Nichols, Esq., of Salem, were appointed by the legislature to examine the records of the Old Colony of Plymouth, which, notwithstanding the union of that colony with Massachusetts in 1691, had been retained, and remained deposited in the office of the register of deeds of Plymouth county. These commissioners were subsequently authorized to cause the most important parts of the records to be transcribed, and the copies to be deposited in the office of the Secretary of State. This duty was intrusted by them to B. R. Nichols, Esq., who performed it with

great fidelity and accuracy. The copies fill eleven folio volumes, which are provided with copious indexes, and can be readily consulted by the historian, the legislator, or the antiquarian.

At the last session of the legislature, by the recommendation of his Excellency the Governor, an appropriation of a thousand dollars was made to defray the expense of arranging and classifying the numerous files of papers and documents deposited in the office of the Secretary of State, which had lain there for ages in a chaotic mass, and consequently had, in the course of time, been not a little reduced in quantity by the abstraction of such loose papers as suited the convenience or taste of inquisitive collectors. The Governor appointed to this office the Rev. Joseph B. Felt, a gentleman whose habits of antiquarian research and familiar acquaintance with our early history eminently qualified him for the place. Ever since his appointment, he has been diligently engaged in examining and arranging this mass of documents, and has succeeded in bringing a portion of them at least into some kind of order. As fast as they were arranged, they have been bound up in large folio volumes, of which twenty are already completed, and provided with indexes. A cursory inspection of these volumes will satisfy any one of the wisdom of the legislative resolve authorizing this arrangement, and of the singular qualifications of the gentleman to whom the work has been intrusted.

It was likewise at the last session of the legislature that a resolve passed, that 1,500 copies of the Laws of the Old Colony of Plymouth should be published for the use of the Commonwealth; and the Governor was authorized to appoint a commissioner to superintend the printing. William Brigham, Esq., received the appointment, and the fruits of his labors we have now before us in the beautifully executed volume, the title of which stands at the head of this notice. In this age of procrastination, particularly in regard to all public works, we feel bound to commend the promptitude as well as the accuracy with which this work has been prepared. The resolve passed on the 5th of April; and within seven months a royal octavo volume of 357 pages has been compiled and carried through the press. As a large portion of it is now first printed from the manuscript records, and as the original spelling is strictly followed, the preparing the copy and correcting the proofs must have been a work of great care and minute attention. We deem it a subject of congratulation, that the editorship of this volume devolved upon one, who was not only so well qualified for the task, but was likewise willing to give to it that personal attention which is essential to secure accuracy in publications of this sort.

The volume is chiefly valuable as illustrating the spirit of our

Pilgrim fathers, and exhibiting the manners, wants, and sentiments of those early times. The laws of a people are one of the best indexes of its character and condition; and this is particularly true of a simple and primitive people like the Plymouth colonists, living together in a small community in a new-found world, and resembling a family or a patriarchal tribe rather than a state or nation. The code before us carries us back to the very infancy of the settlement, shows us the misdemeanors and vices prevalent in the new community, and the penalties that were deemed most proper and efficient to check them. We see the moral as well as the physical difficulties with which the first settlers had to contend, and the remedies which they provided for their relief.

Some of the laws in the Plymouth code give us a very graphic and amusing picture of the simplicity of manners that prevailed in these primitive times, and we cannot refrain from citing one or two of them. The first relates to a custom which we presume will continue to prevail, despite of all laws, so long as the world shall stand. "It is enacted by the Court, that whosoever shall inveigle or endeavour to steal the affections of any man's daughter or maid-servant, or shall make any motion of marriage, not having first obtained leave and consent of the parents or master so to do, shall be punished either by fine or corporal punishment, or both, at the discretion of the bench, and according to the nature of the offence." The next relates to a practice which we fear is nearly as deep-seated as the former in the affections and habits of the community. "It is enacted by the Court, that if any shall be found or seen taking tobacco in the streets of any town within the colonies of this government, or in any barn or out-house, or by the highways, and not above a mile from a dwelling-house, or at his work in the fields, every such person so offending shall forthwith pay twelve pence for every such offence. And for boys and servants that shall offend herein, and have nothing to pay, to be set in the stocks for the first default, and for the second to be whipped. And any person that shall be found smoking of tobacco on the Lord's day, going to or coming from the meeting, within two miles of the meeting-house, shall pay twelve pence for every such default to the colony's use." The last relates to a new species of tythe, if we may not rather call it a new form of the voluntary system. "The Court proposeth it as a thing they judge would be very commendable and beneficial to the towns where God's providence should cast any whales, if they should agree to set apart some part of every such fish or oil for the encouragement of an able, godly minister among them." We seek however in vain among the Plymouth laws for any thing corresponding to the following law passed by the colony of Massachusetts Bay in 1651. "It is ordered by