tions which ever fell to a human being.

His direct

ancestry stood not alone, but were of the company of noble confessors who contended for the maintenance of the political and religious principles which have since shaped American institutions, and are now molding the character and directing the destinies of all civilized nations. The two forces of civilization, Guizot tells us, are what the individual gets from the thoughts and spirit of society, and what society derives from the discoveries and enterprise of the individual. It is consequently of advantage to a person to be born in a community which is fraught with great and good principles and which is controlled by just and wise laws.

"There is a country accent," says La Rochefoucauld, "not in speech only, but in thought, conduct, character, and manner of existing, which never forsakes a man. A country where the entire people is, or even once has been, laid hold offilled to the heart-with an infinite religious idea, has made a step from which it cannot retrograde.' Thought, conscience, the sense that man is denizen of a universe, creature of an eternity, has penetrated to the remotest cottage, to the simplest heart. . . . There is an inspiration in such a people: one may say in a more special sense, the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding. Honor to all the brave and true; everlasting honor to brave old Knox, (one of the truest of the true!)

BIRTH-ANCESTRY.

17

that in the moment while he and his cause, amid civil broils, in convulsion and confusion, were still but struggling for life, he sent the school-master forth to all corners, and said, 'Let the people be taught:'. His message, in its true compass, was, 'Let men know that they are men; created by God, responsible to God; who work in any merest moment of time what will last through eternity!'"

What the great seer of Chelsea, whose last wail over the falseness of the world has only so recently fallen upon our ear, wrote of Presbyterian Scotland, may be with equal truth written of Calvinistic New England. In this New Scotland of religious faith and practice, of political liberty and order, of public schools and colleges, of thrift and enterprise, young Janes had his first and forming years. As naturally as the air from the Berkshire hills streamed into his lungs did the moral life of his native State insinuate itself into his soul. Nor can I overlook nor lessen, for the mere uses of illustration, the physical surroundings upon which he first gazed and in the midst of which he was reared.

Berkshire County is noted for its picturesque scenery. There is not to be found in any land a more beautiful valley than that of the Housatonic, stretching from the town of Lenox, Mass., on the north, to that of Salisbury, Conn., on the south. In the distance northward can be seen the Saddle-back Mountains, reaching their highest point in old Gray Lock,

whence they fall away in all directions in gentle undulations. Near by the hills rise in sufficiently varying heights to impart a sense of grandeur, while the river winds and rushes in its gravelly bed through meadows studded with the graceful elm, and of glossy smoothness. This valley has ever been the favorite resort and home of poets and orators, and of people of culture and leisure. Here Miss Catherine Sedgwick was born and lived; here also William Cullen Bryant spent his early manhood; here Orville Dewey, the famous Unitarian preacher, whose lectures on "Beauty" were rapturously received, loved to linger through the long summer days; here, too, the intellectual T. F. R. Mercein, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, whose marvelous promise as theologian and preacher was cut short by death in the very town where young Janes was born, conceived some of his most suggestive theories.

Mr. Bryant, referring to his reminiscences of this region, says: "It was on the third of October, in the year I have mentioned, (1816,) that I made the journey thither from Cummington. The woods were in all the glory of autumn, and I well remember, as I passed through Stockbridge, how much I was struck by the beauty of the smooth green meadows on the banks of a lovely river which winds near the Sedgwick mansion, the Housatonic, and whose gently-flowing waters seemed tinged with the gold and crimson of the trees that overhung them.

I admired no less the contrast between this soft scene and the steep, craggy hills that overlooked them, clothed with their many-colored forests. I had never before seen the southern part of Berkshire, and congratulated myself on becoming an inhabitant of so picturesque a region."

Amid these scenes of natural beauty the boy Edmund grew up. While he was quite young his father moved a little way down the valley to the town of Salisbury, Conn., where he added to his trade of carpenter the peaceful pursuit of farmer. Here Edmund's youth was spent, alternating in attendance upon the district school and in wholesome work upon the farm. In the one he laid the foundation of his after mental culture, and on the other, in tough encounter with the soil, the foundation of the sinewy and elastic body which became subsequently the physical basis of well-nigh superhuman tasks. Long years subsequently, when on a visit to the scenes of his boyhood, he wrote to his own son: “I saw the stone-wall (fence) which I helped to build when I was a lad." In these rough, homely pursuits the physical culture received, while important, was not the highest benefit arising; he was trained in habits of self-help. He learned to wait on himself, to be mindful of others, and thoughtful in little things. There is no evidence at hand that his schooling went further than was afforded by the facilities of the neighborhood.

But to have had the education of a godly, frugal, and industrious New England home, associated and interwoven with his knowledge of plain English, was a good starting-point for a youth of those days. He needed only the mastership of a district school to put him forward on the high road to professional studies; and that, too, soon came.

During all these days of spelling-book and grammar there was at work upon young Janes's heart the genial and plastic influence of a wise and devout mother. Of her we know but little, yet her character is easy to learn, not only from what he became, but also from his private references to her piety and the high estimate and tender regard he ever manifested for woman's nurture and a mother's influence. In an old manuscript on "Female Education" - one of his very earliest, judging from the rough, yellow, torn paper and the neat chirography-speaking of the mother, he says: "The empire of the mind is equally subject to her sway. The mother is the first book the child ever reads. Her loving smile, her actions, her accents, compose the first alphabet the child ever learns. It is an alphabet of hieroglyphics every sign stands for a separate idea. Corresponding to their nature and influence will be the character and direction of the shooting ideas. How important, then, that this first book be a good one. The peculiar character of the mother gives her great