non-religious. The events of the preceding quarter of a century had firmly fixed in men's minds the ideas of independence and freedom. It was inevitable that, having overthrown political or governmental domination, they should no longer submit to ecclesiastical domination.

Agita

The Colonial Congress of 1774 adopted an address in which "all old religious jealousies were condemned as low-minded infirmities." tion for disestablishment had already begun in Virginia, and this was formally brought about by the bill of rights of the State convention of 1776 and various acts of the Legislature, 1776-1779. Progress toward complete religious freedom was made in nearly all the early State conventions, New Hampshire, 1779 and 1781; Massachusetts, 1778 and 1784; New York, 1777 and 1784; New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, 1776; Maryland, 1777; North Carolina, 1778; Georgia, 1777. In all the States, except Rhode Island and Virginia, there were qualifications in these enactments relating to religion and worship, but disestablishment was practically complete and religious freedom was conceded. †

*Bancroft, United States, vol. vii., p. 159.

Robert Baird, Religion in America (New York, 1856); Leonard Bacon, The Genesis of the New England Churches (New York, 1874); Leonard W. Bacon, A History of American Christianity, vol. xiii., in American Church History series (New York, 1897); W. Meade, Old Churches of Virginia (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1861); Sanford H. Cobb, The Rise of Religious Liberty in America (New York, 1902); H. M.

Colonial Literature.

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The period which saw Puritanism established in New England and Cavalierism in Virginia was, in English literature, the age of Shakespeare, Johnson, Bacon, Burton, Marston, Middleton, Chapman, Beaumont and Fletcher. In the middle of the century were Milton, Herrick, Baxter, Walton, Jeremy Taylor, Bunyan, Lovelace, Herbert and Browne, and before the century had ended the names of Dryden, Congreve, Bentley, Defoe, Newton, Locke and Temple had given added distinction to the already brilliant record in English letters.

From these cultured associations of the Elizabethan and Stuart periods came the founders of the future American republic. Many of the

Dexter, The Congregationalism of the Last Three Hundred Years (New York, 1880); W. White, Memoirs of the American Episcopal Church in the United States (Philadelphia, 1820); W. S. Perry, Historical Collections Relating to the American Colonial Church (5 vols., Hartford, 1876-1878); James S. M. Anderson, The History of the Church of England in the Colonies and Foreign Dependencies of the British Empire (3 vols., London, 1856); George Bancroft, History of the United States of America (5 vols., New York, 1883-1890); The American Church History series (13 vols., New York, 1893-1897); J. A. Doyle, The English Colonies in America (5 vols., London, 1882-1907); Justin Winsor (ed.), A Narrative and Critical History of America (8 vols., Boston, 1884-1889); John Fiske, The Critical Period of American History (Boston, 1889). Consult also histories of the several colonies, colonial documents, and histories of the different denominations. Extensive bibliographies are in Henry M. Dexter, The Congregationalism of the Last Three Hundred Years (New York, 1880), and S. M. Jackson, Appendix of vol. xiii., American Church History series (New York, 1894).

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leaders in this enterprise were men of education and of literary tastes. Among them were college graduates, statesmen, clergymen, and other bookish men. In George Percy, William Strachey, George Sandys, Robert Beverly, William Byrd, William Stith and others of Virgina, and Bradford, Winthrop, the Mathers, Cotton, and others of early Massachusetts, there was sufficient literary taste and literary talent to make impression upon the new communities. It may not do to say that any real literature existed in America in the first colonial century, although in the second century there was much strong polemic and political writing.

In the first century the men of the South were men of action rather than of words: the Dutch of New Netherland were too busy in trade to give much time to writing; the educated clergymen of New England cared to write and print only as they preached. In the next century resistance to English governmental methods and the resultant disagreements between Whigs and Tories dominated men's minds. Thought found expression in oratory, in political papers, in controversial documents, in newspaper utterances upon the single great topic of the period; brilliant and masterful many of these productions were, but few of them fall into the category

of literature.

In the beginning, those of the colonists who wrote at all wrote history,

and there was an astonishingly large amount of this in letters, in tracts, and in small books, mostly descriptive of the new country and of the experiences of the new comers thereto. Of the early Virginians it has been said that, almost without exception, their works were composed in strong energetic English, and had in them an element of new life and great wonder that does not fail to attract.* Substantially the same may as accurately be said of the writers of New Netherland and New England.

Captain John Smith leads the goodly company with his A True Relation of Virginia (1608); A Map of Virginia (1612); A Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624), and other works of genuine historical importance. Then came William Strachey, from whose True Repertory of the Wracke and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Kt., upon and from the Islands of the Bermudas (1610) Shakespeare seems to have drawn for the opening scenes of The Tempest. Alexander Whitaker's Good News from Virginia (1613); John Hammond's Leah and Rachel, or the Two Fruitful Sisters, Virginia and Maryland; George Sandys' poetical translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, a work of remarkable literary character; Nathaniel Bacon's Declaration in the Name of the People of Vir

*Carl Holliday, Colonial Virginia Literature, in American Historical Magazine.

ginia; Robert Beverly's History and Present State of Virginia; Hugh Jones' The Present State of Virginia (1724); William Byrd's History of the Dividing Line (1729); A Progress to the Mines (1732) and A Journey to the Land of Eden (1732); William Stith's The History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia (1747); these constitute the principal contributions of the South to American literature prior to the beginning of the Revolutionary period.

In the Massachusetts Bay Colony the founders were men of superior education and intellectual attainintellectual attainments. Among them were a score or more who had enjoyed the advanages of Cambridge and Oxford. It is only necessary to recall the names of John Winthrop, Thomas Dudley, John Harvard, Richard Mather, Increase Mather, Roger Williams, John Cotton, John Eliot, Michael Wigglesworth, John Wheelwright, Henry Dunster, Thomas Shepard, John Norton, Charles Chauncey, Richard Saltonstall, John Wilson and others. of equal eminence, to be impressed with a full sense of the intellectual character of this commonwealth. Before 1639, between forty and fifty university men were in the colony, one-half of whom were settled within five miles of Boston or Cambridge. Naturally, these educated gentlemen brought books with them. Their libraries were not large and not many in number, but they played no small part in moulding the literary,

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social, religious, and political institutions of the colony. John Harvard gave 300 volumes as the foundation of the library of Harvard College. When Governor John Winthrop died, in 1649, he also left a small lot of books to Harvard; some of these were in Latin, including a two-volume edition of Livy. Governor Thomas Dudley left a library of twenty-four volumes, including

"eight French books, seuerall pamphlets, new new bookes bookes & smalle writings "; among these was a copy of Livy, a history of Turkey, a history of the Netherlands and several other histories, with the rest religious works. A catalogue of the books owned by the Reverend Michael Wigglesworth, made October 22, 1705, gave ninety titles. These were mainly religious books, although among them were editions of Tacitus, Horace, Herodotus and Isocrates, and a few medical and mathematical works. The collections of the Reverend Samuel Eaton of New Haven, of Governor John Winthrop of the Connecticut Colony, of the Reverend Peter Bulkley of Concord, Mass., of Michael Perry, a Boston Bookseller, of the Reverend Ralph Partridge of Duxbury, Mass., of Governor William Bradford and Governor Thomas Prince of the Plymouth Colony, and several others were of distinction for their times.

As in Virginia so in Massachusetts, the earliest literature was for a time mainly historical. Two

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famous histories belong to this period, Governor William Bradford's History of Plimouth Plantation, written in 1620-1646 (but not published until 1855) and Governor John Winthrop's Journal or History of New England, written in 16301646 (but not published entire until 1826). These two works are the most important original sources for the history of the settlement of New England, but only second in interest and value are Mourt's Relation (1622), probably written by Governor Bradford and Edward Winslow; William Wood's New England's Prospect (1604); Edward Johnson's Wonder-Working Providence of Sion's Saviour in New England (1645); and Nathaniel Morton's New England's Memorial (1669). All these works, valuable as records and reflecting the stern devotion to duty and the religious fervor of the writers, have been fittingly characterized as 66 very devout and very personal, fragmentary in form, usually uncouth in style, but almost always sternly direct and sometimes unwittingly memorable in phrasing."* In later days, some of New England's most famous men of letters, Longfellow, Hawthorne, and Whittier for example, found subjects. for their pens in the tales of these old records.

But the chief literary product of

Barrett Wendell and Chester N. Greenough, A History of Literature in America, p. 35 (New York, 1907).

New England in the first half or more of its first century consisted of sermons and tracts in controversial theology by such eminent divines of the period as John Cotton, Thomas Shepard, John Norton, Peter Bulkley, and Thomas Hooker. These treatises never rose to the level of genuine literature. They were heavy, dry and dogmatic, but they were forcible in thought, generally wellwritten, clear and strong in expression, and informed by sound learning. They reflected not only the consuming theology of the writers, but as well the intense religious feeling of the Puritan commonwealths. Nor did the preeminence of the theological writers cease until well after the close of the century. In the second and subsequent generations the record included such notable names as Increase Mather, Cotton Mather, Michael Wigglesworth, John Eliot, and others.

Among the works of Increase Mather, the most learned divine of his generation in New England, and president of Harvard College, was An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences. Cotton Mather was in his time the preeminent representative of the powerful theocracy that held New England under its control for more than a century. He came to this distinction by right of inheritance from his father, Increase Mather, and from his grandfathers, Richard Mather and John Cotton. To this inheritance of clerical aris