Anne Hutchinson's stay in Boston, and it is very probable that she
sought refuge from the anxiety of the troubled days, in poetical
composition, and in poring over Ancient History found consolation
in the fact that old times were by no means better than the new.
The literary life of New England had already begun, and it is
worth while to follow the lines of its growth and development,
through the colonial days, if only to understand better the
curious limitations for any one who sought to give tangible form
to thought, whether in prose or poetry. For North and South, the
story was the same.

The points of divergence in the northern and southern colonies
have been so emphasized, and the impression has become so fixed,
that the divisions of country had as little in common as came
later to be the fact, that any statement as to their essential
agreement, is distrusted or denied. Yet even to-day, in a region
where many causes have made against purity of blood, the traveller
in the South is often startled, in some remote town of the
Carolinas or of Virginia, at the sight of what can only be
characterized as a Southern Yankee. At one's very side in the
little church may sit a man who, if met in Boston, would be taken
for a Brahmin of the Brahmins. His face is as distinctively a New
England one as was Emerson's. High but narrow forehead, prominent
nose, thin lips, and cheek bones a trifle high; clear, cold blue
eyes and a slender upright figure Every line shows repressed
force, the possibility of passionate energy, of fierce enmity and
ruthless judgment on anything outside of personal experience.
Culture is equally evident, but culture refusing to believe in
anything modern, and resting its claims on little beyond the time
of Queen Anne. It is the Puritan alive again, and why not?