298 A Century of /Science 



the Church of England, and the building of Christ 

 Church in 1759 was one marked symptom of the 

 change that was creeping over the little Puritan 

 community. It was a change toward somewhat 

 wider views of life, and toward the softening of 

 old animosities. In contrast with the age in which 

 we live the whole eighteenth century in New Eng- 

 land seems a slow and quiet time, when the public 

 pulse beat more languidly, or at any rate less fe- 

 verishly, than now. The people of New England 

 led a comparatively isolated life. 



Thought in our college town did not keep pace 

 with European centres of thought, as it does in our 

 day. There was less hospitality toward foreign 

 ideas. Few people visited Europe. Life in New 

 England was thrown upon its own resources, and 

 this was in great measure true of Cambridge in the 

 days when it was eight miles from Boston, and in- 

 definitely remote from the mother country. One 

 of the surest results of social isolation is the ac- 

 quirement of peculiarities of speech, often shown 

 in the retaining of archaisms which fashionable 

 language has dropped. That quaint Yankee dia- 

 lect, of which Hosea Biglow says that, 



" For puttin' in a downright lick 



'Twixt Humbug's eyes, ther 's few can meteh it, 

 An' then it helves my thoughts ez slick 



Ez stret-grained hickory doos a hetchet," 



