Page images
PDF
EPUB

the common purpose which brought these men together in their resolve to create for themselves new homes in the wilderness?

This is a point concerning which there has been a great 5 deal of popular misapprehension, and there has been no end of nonsense talked about it. It has been customary first to assume that the Puritan migration was undertaken in the interests of religious liberty, and then to upbraid the Puritans for forgetting all about religious 10 liberty as soon as people came among them who disagreed with their opinions. But this view of the case is not supported by history.

It is quite true that the Puritans were chargeable with gross intolerance; but it is not true that in this they 15 were guilty of inconsistency. The notion that they came to New England for the purpose of establishing religious liberty, in any sense in which we should understand such a phrase, is entirely incorrect. It is neither more nor less than a bit of popular legend.

20 If we mean by the phrase "religious liberty" a state of things in which opposite or contradictory opinions on questions of religion shall exist side by side in the same community, and in which everybody shall decide for himself how far he will conform to the customary religious 25 observances, nothing could have been further from their thoughts. There is nothing they would have regarded with more genuine abhorrence. If they could have been

[ocr errors]

forewarned by a prophetic voice of the general freedom or, as they would have termed it, license—of thought and behavior which prevails in this country to-day, they would very likely have abandoned their enterprise in despair.

The philosophic student of history often has occasion 5 to see how God is wiser than man. In other words, he is often brought to realize how fortunate it is that the leaders in great historic events cannot foresee the remote results of the labors to which they have zealously consecrated their lives.

It is part of the irony of human destiny that the end we really accomplish by striving with might and main is apt to be something quite different from the end we dreamed of as we started on our arduous labor.

10

So it was with the Puritan settlers of New England. 15 The religious liberty that we enjoy to-day is largely the consequence of their work; but it is a consequence that was unforeseen, while the direct and conscious aim of their labors was something that has never been realized, and probably never will be.

20

5

10

15

20

FITZ-JAMES AND RODERICK DHU

[ocr errors]

WALTER SCOTT

NOTE. This selection is taken from "The Lady of the Lake,” which is perhaps the most popular of Scott's poems. The poet says that he took unusual pains to verify each local circumstance of the story.

THE MEETING

The shades of eve come slowly down,
The woods are wrapt in deeper brown,
The owl awakens from her dell,

The fox is heard upon the fell;
Enough remains of glimmering light
To guide the wanderer's steps aright,
Yet not enough from far to show
His figure to the watchful foe.

With cautious step and ear awake,

He climbs the crag and threads the brake;
And not the summer solstice there

Tempered the midnight mountain air,

But every breeze that swept the wold
Benumbed his drenched limbs with cold.

In dread, in danger, and alone,

Famished and chilled, through ways unknown,
Tangled and steep, he journeyed on;
Till, as a rock's huge point he turned,
A watch fire close before him burned.

Beside its embers red and clear,
Basked in his plaid a mountaineer;

66

[ocr errors]

And up he sprung with sword in hand,-
Thy name and purpose! Saxon, stand!
"A stranger." "What dost thou require?
"Rest and a guide, and food and fire.
My life's beset, my path is lost,

[ocr errors]

The gale has chilled my limbs with frost."

[ocr errors][merged small]
[graphic][merged small][merged small]

"Thou dar'st not call thyself a foe?"

10

"I dare! to him and all the band

He brings to aid his murderous hand."

"Bold words!-but, though the beast of game The privilege of chase may claim,

Though space and law the stag we lend,

15

[blocks in formation]

Ere hound we slip or bow we bend,
Who ever recked, where, how, or when,
The prowling fox was trapped or slain?
Thus treacherous scouts, yet sure they lie,
Who say thou cam'st a secret spy!"

"They do, by heaven! - Come Roderick Dhu,
And of his clan the boldest two,

And let me but till morning rest,

I write the falsehood on their crest."

"If by the blaze I mark aright,

Thou bear'st the belt and spur of Knight."

"Then by these tokens may'st thou know
Each proud oppressor's mortal foe.”

66

Enough, enough; sit down and share
A soldier's couch, a soldier's fare."

He gave him of his Highland cheer,
The hardened flesh of mountain deer;
Dry fuel on the fire he laid,

And bade the Saxon share his plaid.
He tended him like welcome guest,
Then thus his further speech addressed: -
"Stranger, I am to Roderick Dhu

A clansman born, a kinsman true;
Each word against his honor spoke
Demands of me avenging stroke;
Yet more, upon thy fate, 't is said,

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »