of other settlers, but the commands of conscience were the only
stimulus to the emigrants from Leyden. Previous to their expedition
hither, they had endured a long banishment from their native
country. Under every species of discouragement, they undertook the
vogage; they performed it in spite of numerous and almost
insuperable obstacles; they arrived upon a wilderness bound with
frost and hoary with snow, without the boundaries of their charter,
outcasts from all human society, and coasted five weeks together, in
the dead of winter, on this tempestuous shore, exposed at once to
the fury of the elements, to the arrows of the native savage, and to
the impending horrors of famine.

Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which
difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. These
qualities have ever been displayed in their mightiest perfection, as
attendants in the retinue of strong passions. From the first
discovery of the Western Hemisphere by Columbus until the settlement
of Virginia which immediately preceded that of Plymouth, the various
adventurers from the ancient world had exhibited upon innumerable
occasions that ardor of enterprise and that stubbornness of pursuit
which set all danger at defiance, and chained the violence of nature
at their feet. But they were all instigated by personal interests.
Avarice and ambition had tuned their souls to that pitch of exaltation.
Selfish passions were the parents of their heroism. It was reserved
for the first settlers of New England to perform achievements
equally arduous, to trample down obstructions equally formidable, to
dispel dangers equally terrific, under the single inspiration of
conscience. To them even liberty herself was but a subordinate and
secondary consideration. They claimed exemption from the mandates
of human authority, as militating with their subjection to a