Eastern times. [volume] (Bath, Me.) 1846-1857, 1850-08-29
MISCELLAN NY
Written for the Eastern Times
New England.
BY HANSON D. WHITE.

+ 4S BY HANSON D. WHITE.
"I.and of the forest and the rock,
Ofmountain reared aloft to mock
The tempests rage, the lightning's shock
| My own green land forever"
Who is there that is not proud of being a
New Englander! True, we have sprung from
the loins of stern and uncompromising ances-
try-men who would never sacrifice principle
| to petty interests of party or policy, and who
would sooner have braved the terrors of stake
and faggot, than have proved recreant to the
cause they honestly believed TO be right We
shame not to call such men our forefathers.-
Though they were possessed of strong preju-
dices, and were guilty of many objectionable
acts of severity-though their religion was
tinetured with superstition and their morality
with the stubborness of an ascetic dogmatism,
their errors moral as well as religious and po-
litical were the errors of the age in which they
lived. To Judge them BY our standard, would
would be an obvious and unheard of perversion
] VI JuotlSC' circumstances over winch
they could necessarily exercise no el1ectual con-
troll, formed their character, as the architect
forms the edifce. Nature had furnished the
material, and circumstances moulded it into
form. Had Charming or an Emerson exis-
! ted in the days of Mather, he would have been
Mather; as stern, as unpromising, as super
stitious, and ready to condemn those who
should endeavor to introduce innovations into
! the moral or political system, or schisms into
the Church, even though the penalty be the
gibbet Or the stake.
But enough of this; we were speaking of
New England as she is, not as she nas-of the
present, not of the past. Bwon in his usual
rhapsodical style, speaking of some part of
Spain, exclains;
''- 1t is goodly thing to see,
What heaven hath done for this delicious
land
What fruits of fragrance blush on every tree!
What goodly prospects o'er the hills expandI'
And Bryant, eulogising the magnificent see
mic attraction of our own loved n England, in
something of the same spirit of enthusiastic ad-
miration, SAYS -
"No, never arched the blue sky Ger,
A land more fair and free
! But it is not for her blue mountains, soaring
away into pellucid summer heavens-it is moi
for her majestic rivers, rolling on in their ul-
surpassed grandeur through her forests of pri.
meval pride-itis not for her magnificent lakes
stretching in boundless beauty, and rejecting in
their mirror-Hke depths, every variety and
shade of landscape, from the 'colonaded for
est" dark with the shadows of a thousand ages.
to the cultivated view, where art, with its
graceful touches, and elegant embellishments,
has assisted the mighty hand of nature-no, il
is not for these alone, that we love New Eng
land. She has deeper and more sacred claim
on our affections in her social, political and re-
iglous institutions, than she can ever present
in the sublimity and beauty of her natural fea-
turcs. These, and these alone make her the
! cynosure ofevery eye: the constellation whose
radiance has already penetrated the most dis
NAL and benighted corner of the earth, start.
/ ling the helot in his chains, from that fearful
dormancy of falling, which is ever the legiti-
mate result and birthrght of degrading and
hopeless servitude, and breathing into his soul
the trumpet-tongued language of liberty, till he
has reused his energies and drank deeply Of
that angel-troubled fountain, the lustrial wa
ters Of which are destined, in good time, and
may we not trust speedily to bring healing and
salvation TO the world.
"Truth crushed to earth shall rise again;
! The eternal years of God are hers -
/ But error, wounded, writhcs in pain,
And dies among her worshipers."