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^ hither to a ' land Trdfti which they were never to return . Hither they had brought , and here they were to fix , their hopes , their attachments and their objects . Some natural tears they shed , as they ieft the p leasant abodes of their fathers , and some emotions they suppressed , when the white cliffs of their native country , mow seen for the last time , grew dim to
their sight . They were acting , however , upon a resolution not to be changed . With whatever stifled regrets , with whatever occasional hesitation , with whatever appulliiig apprehensions , which might sometimes arise with Yorce to shake the firmest purpose , they had yet committed themselves to Heaven and the elements ; and a thousand leagues of water soon
interposed to separate them for ever from the region which gave them birth . A new existence awaited them here ; and when they saw these shores , rough , cold , harbarous and barren as then they were , they beheld their country . That mixed and strong feeling which we call love of
country , and which is , in general , never extinguished in the heart of man , grasped and embraced its proper object here . Whatever constitutes country , except the earth and the sjun , all the moral causes of affection and attachment which operate upon the heart , they had brought with them to their new abode . Here
were now their families and friends , their homos and their property . Before they reached the shore , they had established the elements of a social system , and at a much earlier period had settled their forms of religious worship . At the mouient of their landing , therefore , they possessed institutions of government and
institutions of religion : and friends and families , and social and religious institutions , established by consent , founded on choice and preference , how nearly do these fill up our whole idea of country \ — The morning that beamed on the first
night of their repose , saw the Pilgrims alread y established in their country There were political institutions , and civil liberty and religious worship . Poe 1
'Y » as fancied nothing , in the wanderings <> f heroes , so distinct and characteristic . Hero was man , indeed , unprotected and unprovided for , on the shore of a rude and fearful wilderness ; but it was poli-1 |( : , intelli gent and educated man . Every thills was civilized but the physical world . lns titutions containing in substance all 'hat ages had done for human govern t uiLi
men vvvrt * <> ut < iV > i ; ulw ^ C » ' » / Vw * - * k ^ # - f ' ill n , were established in a forest . Cultivated mind was to act on uncultivated nature ; and , more than all , a government and a country were to commence w'th thv very fim foundations laid under
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the divine light of * he Christian religion , Happy auspices of a happy futurity ! Who would wish that his country ' s existence had otherwise begun ?— -Who would desire the power of going back to the ages of fable ? Who would wish for an origin , obscured in the darkness of antiquity ? - —¦
Who would wish for other emblazoning of his country ' s heraldry , or other ornaments of her genealogy , than to be able to say , that her first existence was with intelligence ; her first breath the inspirations of liberty ; her first principle the truth of divine religion ? >
Local attachments and sympathies would ere long spring up in the breasts of our ancestors , endearing to them the place of their refuge . Whatever natural objects are associated with interesting scenes and high efforts , obtain a hold on human feeling , and demand from the heart a sort of recognition and regard . This Rock soon became hallowed in the
esteem of the Pilgrims , and these hills grateful to their sight . Neither they nor their children were again to till the soil of England , nor again to traverse the seas which surrounded her . But here was a new sea , now open to their enterprise , and a new soil , which had not failed to respond gratefully to their
laborious industry , and which was already assuming a robe of verdure . Hardly had they provided shelter for the living , ere they were summoned to erect sepulchres for the dead . The ground had become sacred , by enclosing the remains of some of their companions and connexions . A
parent , a child , a husband or a wife , had gone the way of all rlesh , and mingled with the dust of New England . We naturally look with strong emotions to the spot , rhough it be a wilderness , where the ashes of those we have loved repose * Where the heart has laid down what
it loved most , it is desirous of laying itself down . No sculptured marble , no enduring monument , no honourable inscription , no ever-burning taper that would drive away the darkness of death , can soften our sense of the . reality uf mortality , and hallow to our feelings the ground which is to cover us , like the consciousness that we shall sleep , dust to dust , with ( he objects of our affections .
" In a short time other causes sprung up to hind the Pilgrims with new cords to their chosen land . Children were born , iind the hopes of future generations arose , in the spot of their new habitation . The second generation found this the luud of their nativity , and saw that they were hound to ii . s fortunes . They beheld their fathers * graves around them , and while they read the memorials of their toils aiul
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Oomynemoraiwn of the First Settlement qf KewJEnglarwt . 343
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1822, page 343, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2513/page/23/
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