160 FIRST PURITAN SETTLERS. [CHAP. XII. 



may look upon, the present descendants of the first colonists as 

 constituting a nation hardly inferior in numbers to what England 

 itse]f was only two centuries before our times. The development, 

 therefore, of the present inhabitants from a small original stock 

 has been so rapid, and the intermediate generations so few, that 

 we must be quite prepared to discover in the founders of the colony 

 of the seventeenth century, the germ of all the wonderful results 

 which have since so rapidly unfolded themselves. 



Nor is this difficult. In the first place, before the great civil 

 war broke out in England, when the principal emigration took 

 place to Massachusetts, the Puritans were by no means an illit 

 erate or uncultivated sect. They reckoned in their ranks a 

 considerable number of men of good station and family, who had 

 received the best education which the schools and universities 

 then afforded. Some of the most influential of the early New 

 England divines, such as Cotton Mather, were good scholars, and 

 have left writings which display much reading and an acquaint 

 ance with the Greek and Latin languages. Milton s &quot; Paradise 

 Lost&quot; usually accompanied the Bible into the log-houses of the 

 early settlers, and with the &quot; Paradise Lost&quot; the minor poems 

 of the same author were commonly associated. 



The Puritans who first went into exile, after enduring much 

 oppression in their native country, were men who were ready to 

 brave the wilderness rather than profess doctrines or conform to 

 a ritual which they abhorred. They were a pure and conscien 

 tious body. They might be ignorant or fanatical, but they were 

 at least sincere, and no hypocrites had as yet been tempted to 

 join them for the sake of worldly promotion, as happened at a 

 later period, when Puritanism in the mother country had become 

 dominant in the state. Full of faith, and believing that their 

 religious tenets must be strengthened by free investigation, they 

 held that the study and interpretation of the Scriptures should 

 not be the monopoly of a particular order of men, but that every 

 layman was bound to search them for himself. Hence they were 

 anxious to have all their children taught to read. So early as 

 the year 1647, they instituted common schools, the law declaring 

 &quot; that all the brethren shall teach their children and apprentices 



