itself. They constituted a corporation to which they themselves might establish at their pleasure the terms of admission. They held in their own hands the key to their asylum, and maintained their right of closing its doors against the enemies of its harmony and its safety.

"In June and July, the ships which bore Winthrop and his immediate companions arrived to a scene of gloom; such of the earlier emigrants as had survived the previous winter were poor and weak from sickness; their corn and bread were hardly enough for a fortnight's supply. Instead of offering a welcome, they thronged to the new comers to be fed. Nearly two hundred servants, who had been sent over at a great expense, received their liberty, free from all engagements; their labor, such was the excessive scarcity, was worth less than the cost of their maintenance.

"The selection of places for the new plantations became the immediate care. The bay and the adjoining rivers were examined; if Charlestown was the place of the first sojourning, it was not long before the fires of civilization, never more to be quenched, were kindled in Boston and the adjacent villages. The dispersion of the company was esteemed a grievance; but no time was left for long deliberation, and those who had health began to build. Yet sickness delayed the progress of the work, and death often withdrew the laborer from the fruit of his exertions. Every hardship was encountered. The emigrants lodged at best in tents of cloth and in miserable hovels; they beheld their friends weekly, yea, almost daily, drop away before their eyes; in a country abounding in secret fountains, they perished for the want of good water. Many of them had been accustomed to plenty and ease, the refinements of cultivated life, and the conveniences of luxury. Woman was there to struggle against unforeseen hardships, unwonted sorrows; the men, who defied trials for themselves, were miserable at beholding those whom they cherished dismayed by the horrors which encompassed them. The virtues of Arabella Johnson, a daughter of the house of Lincoln, could not break through the gloomy shadow that surrounded her; and as she had been ill before her arrival, grief soon hurried her to the grave. Her husband, one of the first men in the colony, zealous for pure religion, in life 'the greatest furtherer of the plantation, and by his bequests a

benefactor of the infant state, was subdued by the force of disease and afflictions; but he died willingly and in sweet peace, 'making a most godly end.' Winthrop lost a son, though not by disease. A hundred or more, some of them of the board of assistants, men who had enjoyed high consideration, and had been revered with confidence as the inseparable companions of the common misery or the common success, disheartened by the scenes of woe, and dreading famine and death, deserted Massachusetts and sailed for England. Before December, two hundred, at the least, had died. Yet, as the brightest lightnings are kindled in the darkest clouds, the general distress did but augment the piety and confirm the fortitude of the colonists. Their enthusiasm was softened by the mildest sympathy with suffering humanity, while a sincere religious faith kept guard against despondency and weakness. Not a hurried line, not a trace of repining, appears in their records; the congregations always assembled at the stated times, whether in the open fields or under the shade of an ancient tree; in the midst of want, they abounded in hope; in the solitudes of the wilderness, they believed themselves in company with the greatest, the most beneficent of Beings. Honor is due not less to those who perished than to those who survived; to the martyrs, the hour of death was an hour of triumph, such as is never witnessed in more tranquil seasons, just as there can be no gorgeous sunset but when the vapors of evening gather in hoary masses round the west to reflect the glories of declining day. For that placid resignation which diffuses grace round the bed of sickness, and makes death too serene for sorrow and too beautiful for fear, no one was more remarkable than the daughter of Thomas Sharp, whose youth and sex, and, as it seemed, unequaled virtues, won the warmest eulogies of the austere Dudley. Even children caught the spirit of the place; and in their last hours, awoke to the awful mystery of the impending change, awaited its approach in the tranquil confidence of faith, and went to the grave full of immortality. The survivors bore all things meekly, 'remembering the end of their coming hither.' 'We here enjoy God and Jesus Christ,' wrote Winthrop to his wife, whom pregnancy had detained in England, 'and is not this enough? I thank God I like so well to be here as I do not repent my coming. I would not have altered my course though I had

foreseen all these afflictions. I never had more content of mind.""

The son of John Winthrop was the Governor of Connecticut. Of him the same writer says:

"The colonies of Plymouth, of Hartford, and New Haven, not less than of Rhode Island, proclaimed the new king, and acted in his name; and the rising republic on the Connecticut [A.D. 1660] appeared in London by its representative, the younger Winthrop, who went, as it were, between the mangled limbs of his father-in-law, to insure the welfare of his fellow-exiles in the West. They had purchased their lands of the assigns of the Earl of Warwick, and from Uncas they had bought the territory of the Mohegans, and the news of the Restoration awakened a desire for a patent. But the little colony proceeded warily they had drafted among themselves the instrument which they desired the king to ratify; and they could plead for their possessions their rights by purchase, by conquest from the Pequods, and by their own labor, which had redeemed the wilderness. A letter was also addressed from Connecticut to the aged Lord Say and Seal, the early friend of the emigrants, and now, on the Restoration, while it was yet the royal policy to conciliate the Presbyterians, a favored officer of the crown. By the memory of past benefits and the promise of grateful regard, they request his influence to obtain for them a guarantee for their liberties.

"The venerable man, too aged for active exertion, secured for his clients the kind offices of the lord-chamberlain, the Earl of Manchester, a man of an obliging temper, universally beloved, being of a virtuous and generous mind. Indeed, he was a noble and a worthy lord, and one that loved the godly. He and Lord Say did join together, that their godly friends in New England might enjoy their just rights and liberties.'

"But the chief happiness of Connecticut was in the selection. of its agent. In the younger Winthrop, the qualities of human excellence were mingled in such happy proportions, that, while he always wore an air of contentment, no enterprise in which he engaged seemed too lofty for his powers. Even as a child he had been the pride of his father's house; he had received the best instruction which Cambridge and Dublin could afford, and had perfected his education by visiting, in part at least, in the

public service, not Holland and France only, in the days of Prince Maurice and Richelieu, but Venice and Constantinople. From boyhood his manners had been spotless, and the purity of his soul added luster and beauty to the gifts of nature and industry. As he traveled through Europe, he sought the society of men eminent for learning. Returning to England in the bloom of life, with every promise of preferment which genius, gentleness of temper, and influence at court could inspire, he preferred to follow his father to the New World, regarding ‘diversities of countries but as so many inns,' alike conducting to 'the journey's end.' When his father, the father of Massachusetts, became impoverished by his expenses in planting the col ony, the pious son, unsolicited and without recompense, relinquished his large inheritance that 'it might be spent in furthering the great work' in Massachusetts; himself, single-handed and without wealth, engaged in the enterprise of planting Connecticut. Care for posterity seemed the motive to his actions. His vast and elevated mind had, moreover, that largeness, that he respected learning, and virtue, and genius, in whatever sect they might be found. No narrow bigotry limited his affections or his esteem; and when Quakers had become the objects of persecution, he was earnest and unremitting in argument and entreaty to prevent the effusion of blood. Master over his own mind, he never regretted the brilliant prospects he had resigned, nor complained of the comparative solitude of New London: a large library furnished employment to his mind; the study of nature, according to the principles of the philosophy of Bacon, was his delight, for he had a gift in understanding and art,' and his home was endeared by a happy marriage and many sweet children. His knowledge of human nature was as remarkable as his virtues. He never attempted impracticable things; but, understanding the springs of action and the principles that control affairs, he calmly and noiselessly succeeded in all that he undertook. The New World was full of his praises; Puritans, and Quakers, and the freemen of Rhode Isl. and were alike his eulogists; the Dutch at New York, not less than all New England, had confidence in his integrity; Clarendon and Milton, Newton and Robert Boyle, became his correspondents. If he had faults, they are forgotten. In history, he appears, by unanimous testimony from early life, without a

blemish, and it is the beautiful testimony of his own father that God gave him favor in the eyes of all with whom he had to do.' In his interview with Charles the Second, there is reason to believe, he was able to inspire that naturally benevolent monarch with curiosity; perhaps he amused him with accounts of Indian warfare, and descriptions of the marvels of a virgin world. A favorable recollection of Charles the First, who had been a friend to his father's father, and who gave to his family an hereditary claim on the Stuarts, was effectually revived. His personal merits, sympathy for his family, his exertions, the petition of the colony, and, as I believe, the real good-will of Clarendon-for we must not reject all faith in generous feeling -easily prevailed to obtain for Connecticut an ample patent. The courtiers of King Charles, who themselves had an eye to possessions in America, suggested no limitations; and perhaps it was believed that Connecticut would serve to balance the power of Massachusetts."

Besides his remote ancestry, the father of Mr. Winthrop was for many years the highly-respected lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts. After being educated partly in private and partly in the public common schools of Boston, Robert C. was graduated at Harvard University in the year 1828, among the three or four first scholars. He studied law with Daniel Webster; but, soon after coming to the bar in 1831, was diverted to public life, and abandoned all professional practice. In 1834 or 1835 he was elected a member of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts. He remained in that body for six years, during the last three of which he was Speaker of the House-a station which he filled with dignity and distinction, and in which he acquired the highest estimation of the people of his state. In familiarity with parliamentary rules, and in courtesy of demeanor, combined with a prompt and vigorous administration of the duties of the chair, few men, it is said, exhibited a higher degree of fitness for presiding over a deliberative assembly.

In the autumn of 1840 he was elected to Congress, to take the place of Abbott Lawrence, whose health compelled him to resign his seat. From that time to the present he has been a member of the House, with the exception of an interval of three months during the long session of 1842, when he resigned his seat in consequence of domestic calamity. During that inter