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South Carolina (South Carolina, United States) (search for this): chapter 3
larly attached to the things of this present world. Philadelphia was prosperous and therewith content. Virginia was a paradise with no forbidden fruit. Hugh Jones, writing of it in 1724, considers North Carolina the refuge of runaways, and South Carolina the delight of buccaneers and pirates, but Virginia the happy retreat of true Britons and true Churchmen. Unluckily these Virginians, well nourished by the plenty of the country, have contemptible notions of England! We shall hear from themwhose turn at a London apprenticeship was soon to come. If we follow this younger brother to Philadelphia and to Bradford's American Mercury or to Franklin's own Pennsylvania Gazette, or if we study the Gazettes of Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina, the impression is still the same. The literary news is still chiefly from London, from two months to a year late. London books are imported and reprinted. Franklin reprints Pamela, and his Library Company of Philadelphia has two copies of
Jefferson City (Missouri, United States) (search for this): chapter 3
y, his attitude toward the seventeenth was that of amused or contemptuous superiority. Thackeray has somewhere a charming phrase about his own love for the back seat of the stage-coach, the seat which, in the old coaching days, gave one a view of the receding landscape. Thackeray, like Burke before him, loved historical associations, historical sentiment, the backward look over the long road which humanity has traveled. But Franklin faced the other way. He would have endorsed his friend Jefferson's scornful sentence, The dead have no rights. He joined himself wholly to that eighteenth century in which his own lot was cast, and, alike in his qualities and in his defects, he became one of its most perfect representatives. To catch the full spirit of that age, turn for an instant to the London of 1724--the year of Franklin's arrival. Thirty-six years have elapsed since the glorious Revolution of 1688; the Whig principles, then triumphant, have been tacitly accepted by both polit
Europe (search for this): chapter 3
to the discipline of academic disputation. They knew the ideas and the vocabulary of cultivated Europe and were conscious of no provincial inferiority. In the study of the physical sciences, likewise, the colonials were but little behind the mother country. The Royal Society had its distinguished members here. The Mathers, the Dudleys, John Winthrop of Connecticut, John Bartram, James Logan, James Godfrey, Cadwallader Colden, and above all, Franklin himself, were winning the respect of European students, and were teaching Americans to use their eyes and their minds not merely upon the records of the past but in searching out the inexhaustible meanings of the present. There is no more fascinating story than that of the beginnings of American science in and outside of the colleges, and this movement, like the influence of journalism and of the higher education, counted for colonial union. Professor Tyler, our foremost literary student of the period, summarizes the characteristi
New England (United States) (search for this): chapter 3
was becoming secularized. The theocracy of New England had failed. In the height of the tragic foprentice into piety. If such was the state of New England, the laxity of New York and Virginia neors, of Harvard College, of the churches of New England, of marvelous events, of Indian wars; and i24. As a picture of everyday happenings in New England, Sewall's Diary is as far superior to Matheinstinctively backward to the Heroic Age of New England with pious nervous exaltation, and Samuel Sin him the rank of the foremost preacher in New England. John Wesley reads at Oxford his account oe touch like this, in the bitter winters of New England, and one wonders whether Edwards's brain wahe Franklins were relatively late comers to New England. They sprang from a long line of blacksmitakespeare. He had no reverence for Puritan New England. To its moral beauty, its fine severity, he, and even ink, were found in London. The New England Courant, established in Boston in 1721 by J[1 more...]
Preussen (search for this): chapter 3
ent of the Book of Common Prayer, but to go even so far as to propose seriously a new rendering of the Lord's Prayer. His famous proposal for a new version of the Bible, however, which Matthew Arnold solemnly held up to reprobation, was only a joke which Matthew Arnold did not see — the new version of Job being, in fact, a clever bit of political satire against party leadership in England. Even more brilliant examples of his skill in political satire are his imaginary Edict of the King of Prussia against England, and his famous Rules for Reducing a great Empire to a Small one. But I must not try to call the roll of all the good things in Franklin's ten volumes. I will simply say that those who know Franklin only in his Autobiography, charming as that classic production is, have made but an imperfect acquaintance with the range, the vitality, the vigor of this admirable craftsman who chose a style smooth, clear, and short, and made it serve every purpose of his versatile and benef
Northamptonshire (United Kingdom) (search for this): chapter 3
delphia and becomes its leading citizen, fights the long battle of the American colonies in London, sits in the Continental Congress, sails to Europe to arrange that French Alliance which brought our Revolution to a successful issue, and comes home at last, full of years and honors, to a bland and philosophical exit from the stage! He broke with every Puritan tradition. The Franklins were relatively late comers to New England. They sprang from a long line of blacksmiths at Ecton in Northamptonshire. The seat of the Washingtons was not far away, and Franklin's latest biographer points out that the pinkcoated huntsmen of the Washington gentry may often have stopped at Ecton to have their horses shod at the Franklin smithy. Benjamin's father came out in 1685, more than fifty years after the most notable Puritan emigration. Young Benjamin, born in 1706, was as untouched by the ardors of that elder generation as he would have been by the visions of Dante — an author, by the way, who
Providence, R. I. (Rhode Island, United States) (search for this): chapter 3
thereafter deal with the literature of one multitudinous people, variegated, indeed, in personal traits, but single in its commanding ideas and in its national destinies. It is easy to be wise after the event. Yet there was living in London in 1765, as the agent for Pennsylvania, a shrewd and bland Colonial — an honorary M. A. from both Harvard and Yale, a D. C.L. of Oxford and an Ll.D. of St. Andrewswho was by no means sure that the Stamp Act meant the end of Colonialism. And Franklin's uncertainty was shared by Washington. When the tall Virginian took command of the Continental Army as late as 1775, he abhorred the idea of independence. Nevertheless John Jay, writing the second number of the Federalist in 1787, only twelve years later, could say: Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people; a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government.
Enfield (Massachusetts, United States) (search for this): chapter 3
lton. The literary reputation of Jonathan Edwards has turned, like the vicissitudes of his life, upon factors that could, not be foreseen. His contemporary fame was chiefly as a preacher, and was due to sermons like those upon God glorified in man's Dependence and The reality of spiritual life, rather than to such discourses as the Enfield sermon, Sinners in the hands of an Angry God, which in our own day is the best known of his deliverances. Legends have grown up around this terrific Enfield sermon. Its fearful power over its immediate hearers cannot be gainsaid, and it will long continue to be quoted as an example of the length to which a Calvinistic logician of genius was compelled by his own scheme to go. We still see the tall, sweet-faced man, worn by his daily twelve hours of intense mental toil, leaning on one elbow in the pulpit and reading from manuscript, without even raising his gentle voice, those words which smote his congregation into spasms of terror and which s
Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania, United States) (search for this): chapter 3
turn at a London apprenticeship was soon to come. If we follow this younger brother to Philadelphia and to Bradford's American Mercury or to Franklin's own Pennsylvania Gazette, or if we study the Gazettes of Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina, the impression is still the same. The literary news is still chiefly from Londher graduates for more than a century. William and Mary was founded in 1693, Yale in 1701, Princeton in 1746, King's (now Columbia) in 1754, the University of Pennsylvania in 1755, and Brown in 1764. These colonial colleges were mainly in the hands of clergymen. They tended to reproduce a type of scholarship based upon the ancsingle in its commanding ideas and in its national destinies. It is easy to be wise after the event. Yet there was living in London in 1765, as the agent for Pennsylvania, a shrewd and bland Colonial — an honorary M. A. from both Harvard and Yale, a D. C.L. of Oxford and an Ll.D. of St. Andrewswho was by no means sure that the S
Holland (Netherlands) (search for this): chapter 3
s were by no means so purely English as the first settlers. The 1,600,000 colonists in 1760 were mingled of many stocks, the largest non-English elements being German and Scotch-Irish--that is, Scotch who had settled for a while in Ulster before emigrating to America. About one-third of the colonists in 1760, says Professor Channing, were born outside of America. Crevecceur's Letters from an American farmer thus defined the Americans: They are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. From this promiscuous breed that race now called Americans has arisen. The Atlantic seaboard, with a narrow strip inland, was fairly well covered by local communities, differing in blood, in religion, in political organization-a congeries of separate experiments or young utopias, waiting for that most utopian experiment of all, a federal union. But the dominant language of the promiscuous breed was English, and in the few real centers of intellectual life the English
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