banished from Massachusetts for being a baptist in his sentiments, and for preaching his views. The early baptists in that State were first "fined," then "whipped," then "imprisoned!" The Quakers were treated the same way, but only worse. In 1656 twelve Quakers were banished from Massachusetts by order of the general court. Four of these, who after some time returned, were executed (!) in 1669. One of the humane objects which Penn had in view in founding his colony, was to open an asylum for his persecuted brethren from Virginia and New England. Strange as it may seem. the very men who fled from persecution in England began so soon to persecute others! The 3. In regard to superstition. We recollect of having gone through the first three volumes of the Colonial Records of Pennsylvania, a few years ago, and, so far as our recollection serves us, there were only two cases of trial for witchcraft recorded. first case was in 1683; the party (the names, by the way, of those concerned do not indicate them to be Germans) was tried, and the jury "brought her in guilty of having the common fame of a witch, but not guilty in manner and form as she stands indicted." She gives fifty pounds bail for her good behaviour for six months, and is dismissed. The second was in 1701. "The matter was inquired into, and being found trifling was dismissed." Now, look at this witch business in New England. They not only began earlier, but carried on the fearful fanaticism for almost half a con V. Let the following account, by a New-Englander himself,y the reader: "The first suspicion of witchcraft in New England, and in the United States, began at Springfield, Massachusetts, as early as 1645. Several persons about that time were accused, tried, and executed in Massachusetts; one at Charlestown, one at Dorchester, one at Cambridge, and one at Boston. For almost thirty years afterwards the subject rested. But in 1687 or 1688, it was revived in Boston; four of the children of John Goodwin uniting in accusing a poor Irish woman with bewitching them. Unhappily, the accusation was regarded with attention, and the woman was tried and executed. Their "Near the close of February, 1692, the subject was again revived, in consequence of several children in Danvers, Salem, beginning to act in a peculiar and unaccountable manner. strange conduct continuing for several days, their friends betook themselves to fasting and prayer. During religious exercises it was found that the children were generally decent and still; but after service was ended they renewed their former inexplicable conduct. This was deemed sufficient evidence that they were laboring under the influence of witchcraft. "At the expiration of some days the children began to accuse several persons in the neighborhood of bewitching them. Unfor tunately, they were credited, and the suspected authors of the spell' were seized and imprisoned. "From this date the awful mania rapidly spread into the neighboring country, and soon appeared in various parts of Essex, Middlesex and Suffolk. Persons at Andover, Ipswich, Gloucester, Boston, and several other places, were accused by their neighbors and others. "For some time the victims were selected only from the lower classes. But at length the accusations fell upon persons of the most respectable rank. In August, Mr. George Borroughs, some time minister in Salem, was accused, brought to trial, and condemned. Accusations were also brought against Mr. English, a respectable merchant in Salem, and his wife; against Messrs. Dudley and John Bradstreet, sons of the then late Governor Bradstreet; against the wife of Mr. Hale, and the lady of Sir William Phipps. "The evil had now become awfully alarming. One man, named Giles Corey, had been pressed to death for refusing to put himself on trial by jury; and nineteen persons had been executed, more than one-third of whom were members of the church. One hundred and fifty persons were in prison, and two hundred were accused." 4. Much is said of the intelligence of the Yankees. We were at one time wont to believe that there was no such a thing as ignorance at all among the descendants of the Puritans. We believed that ignorance was confined to the Germans of Pennsylvania. Behold, were we not taught so? Does not Goodrich tell us, in his geography, that "not above one-third of all the children in this State (Pennsylvania) attend school! and the general means of instruction are very limited!" Did you ever before know this humiliating fact, ye Pennsylvanians? Now, this was told us, and we believed it all, because it was in the books; and with equal implicitness did we believe all the self-glorification which came to us from the east. We became wiser in this wise. Having come, in 1838, to sojourn during a summer in the Western Reserve, in Ohio, which is known to be settled mostly with Yankees—at least so was the part we were in-we had an opportunity of seeing the common order of New Englanders, the true natives, just from the land of light. The reader must take our word for it, when we tell him that it was a long while before we could get over our utter astonishment at the ignorance and absence of all polish and refinement which characterized that boorish race. We have seen nothing to exceed it in the most stupid regions of our own State. It is well known that the common order of New Englanders cannot speak correct English. For telling a thing, they say "telling on it." For cows, they say keowes; for county, they say keountey. Whoever has been among the common Yankees, knows that those "Brother Jonathan" pieces, which we sometimes see in newspapers, are a fair specimen of pronounciation among the common people. Nor is bad pronounciation confined to the ignorant. We remember of having listened to the conversation of a lady, in the cars, who was the principal of a female seminary, as we incidentally learned from her remarks, and never have we heard more barbarous English pronunciation from any one professing to be educated. 5. New Englanders far exceed the staid Pennsylvanians in falling in with all kinds of new-fangled impositions. It is the very birth place of all kinds of humbugs. Joe Smith was a New York Yankee; and most of his first sattelites and followers were of the same kind of people. The "Spiritual Rappings" had their origin in the same region, and have flourished most in the north and east. Millerism is from New England; Miller himself, we believe, was a Vermonter. Some of the wildest and most scorching storms of religious fanaticism that have ever swept over any portion of our land have been in New England and the eastern portions of New York. Where do we get our Unitarianism, Universalism, and all those various forms of infidelity propagated by public lecturers in our principal cities, but from the same region. Scarcely a year passes that does not give birth to some new power for the renovation of the world-some sovereign balm for the wants and wounds of human nature-some new scheme for making straight the crooked places in the social organization. We do not wish to be understood, in these remarks, as glorifying our own State and the Germans, or as speaking uncharitably of others. Our object is merely to reprove that arrogance which a certain class of New Englanders manifest when they come among us, or speak of us. We have wished, also, to enlighten, so far as in us lies, a certain class among us who, out of affectation, or some other reason, sing the song as it has been sung to them, in reference to the glory and honor of every thing that is English. Moreover, let us all learn from Old Humphrey, when we go forth to enlighten others, and always first confess our own weakness. It is said that the peaccck drops his train and gets humble whenever he looks at his feet; and we think every nation, as well as every individual, will gain in modesty and lose some arrogance by frequently looking back to that which hath been. While we wish to weep over all our past sins and follies, both as individuals and as a State, let us also be thankful that, although we have been foolish in many things, God has graciously preserved us from the awful silliness and wickedness of making "blue laws," burning witches, and cutting off people's heads, because they would not be as pious as we ourselves, and especially because they would not be religious in the same way. TO MY MOTHER. "There is not in all this cold and hollow world a fount of deep, strong, deathless love, save that within a mother's breast."-MRS. HEMANS. O, MOTHER, Could I speak thy worth, Ah, who that shares such love as this- Her kindness daily still I knew; Her chidings still restrained from wrong. O, mother, dear, methinks I see MANCHESTER, May, 1854. ANN. YOUTH AND SUMMER. SUMMER'S full of golden things, Summer, rich in joy it is, Like unto some heavenly clime! Doth not wear a shade of sadness? Youth, thou never dost decay! From the green earth shall not sever. ་ RUSSIA. THERE is a time when the blue hills that gird one's native valley are the bounds of the world. All out beyond is as the lands of fairy tales. Crusoe's island and the countries of the Borbdinags and the Lilliputs are the same realities as merry old England and sunny France. It is only when we have climbed those hills and gazing from the tops, we see the real rise like islands seen afar over the waters of the broad ocean-dim at first, on the edge of the horizon, until the steady gaze and nearer approach brings out the real; while they which existed only in the tales that were told of them, fade away, but remembered, perhaps, when the dreams of our childhood are recalled. It is so with the infancy of nations. As we look back eastward to the twilight of morning, how truly may we say that their native mountains closed their view and their knowledge. Before the tenth century but few efforts were made in exploration. All was dim and indistinct beyond the circle in which civilized people dwelt. Even now we may not boast of the extent of our knowledge. It was in this early time of life when I read in the books written more than a thousand years ago, in a language no longer used by living tongue, of an unknown and almost fabled land. And when my fancy had yielded the sway to reason, and separated the imagined from the real, I saw that the land they spoke of was as dreamy to them as to me. It lay towards the North, they said. "The turbid Ister* tossing its golden sand, and the Macotian wave" were its boundaries on the south: above the Scythian‡ tribes fed their flocks, and "Rhodope returns stretched out beneath the very pole." There it lay spreading far up toward the north, darkling as it spread, until the tired eye failed to reach its dim depths. Some venturous spirits had at times sought its wilds and returned with tales and horrors enough to deter others. Like the islands of the Coral, this land has been long, as it were, beneath the waters. Insensibly and by untiring efforts, directed on a settled policy, it has risen-breakers at first dashing to pieces ships upon whose charts it had not been marked-but now, upon immutable foundations, it raises its cliffs far up into the sky; and adding daily to its shores, it threatens to displace the very waves which once so proudly rolled over its head. For we Scythia was the general name given to all the country laying north of the Dneister and east of Germany. However, that between Germany and the Volga had the particular name of Sarmatia, Vir. Geor. Rhodope-the Despoto Dagh, a mountain in Turkey, in Europe, a reference to which will show how faint their ideas of geography were. |