to defend his ancient home from the grasp, of his remorseless, but victorious foe.
But it is not of scenes like these we ask thy records now,—no thrilling tale of heroic deeds, startling adventure or disappointed love. It is the simple record of the human soul in common life, affected by no extraordinary incidents save such as fall to the lot of all.
Now that the age of Puritan bigotry has passed, one may breathe freely while treading the field of romance. Reverently let us judge those stern virtues whence superstition sprung as the natural reaction of the spiritual despotism that sent from the church the children of her own faith, to seek in austerity an antidote to the universal corruption from which they had fled. Shocked by the heartlessness of the forms they had been taught to regard as worship, and still more by the hypocrisy that enthroned itself in church and state as the supreme Head to which all must swear allegiance, they looked upon life as one sublime but awful reality, presenting no middle ground, aiming at one sole, absolute purpose, to escape the terrors of hell by obtaining the blessedness of heaven. For this should prayer and praise be raised, the ritual observed, and good works performed.
Whatever pertained to the pleasures of this life, aside from that one ultimate object, was considered too trivial, if not too sinful, to engage the attention of immortal beings, with such a momentous future before them. What were our earthly sufferings, either physical or mental, magnified to the extent of
