they are woven together. In Part Third, I found I did not need any aid from imagination, and I have therefore followed the course of simple and straightforward narrative, giving a view of domestic life in the Old Colony in the days of the Pilgrims. In all the trials and sacrifices of our ancestors one thing appears prominent, — the beauty and glory of suffering, when endured for conscience' sake. This is not less conspicuous because the sufferers differed in faith, some being Catholic and some Protestant; for in both cases alike, obedience to the supreme law gave a heavenly lustre to their example and a sweet fragrance to their memories. Whoever will attempt the study of history according to the method indicated in this work, taking some family tree, it matters not much whose it is, — and making its branches yield the fruits and lessons of past experience, will find that the study has a fresh and absorbing interest, and that the track over which it leads him will be covered with a light in which minute objects appear with a most attractive brightness. In the collection of facts, I have been aided by the researches of several individuals whose names it may not be proper to mention here; but literary honesty seems to require a distinct acknowledgment of the kindness of the Hon. David Sears of Boston, to whom I have been indebted for many exceedingly curious and interesting documents. Part Second, or the sketch entitled "The Adventurer," narrates events and transactions in the Netherlands, with which the reading public have lately become familiar through Prescott's Philip II. and Motley's Dutch Republic. It lay in my way to show the bearing of those wonderful events on family fortunes, but I had finished that part before either of the above-named admirable histories was published. The writer of these sketches had no intention, when he commenced them, of producing them for any other purpose than private reading. In intervals of more severe mental labor they were studies in history after a new method, that of incarnating and galvanizing old skeletons. The skeletons, however, leaped up with so much life, that a part of them have been dismissed to a more unrestricted circulation. PART I. THE EXILE. "Good Heaven! what sorrows gloomed that parting day That called them from their native walks away, When the poor exiles, every pleasure past, Hung round the bowers and fondly looked their last, And took a long farewell, and wished in vain 1 CHAPTER I. THE MARTYRDOM. THE Tower is one of the first objects which the eye searches after, as the traveller approaches the city of London. A huge, square edifice, with turrets at each corner, rises above a pile of lower buildings and smaller towers that surround it. Around the whole pile there is a moat, and a fortified wall, at whose base on the southern side flows the Thames, near enough, with a westering sun, to reflect the turrets in its gentle waves. Outside of the fortified wall, and not a great way from its northwestern angle, the ground swells into a small eminence, which bears the name of Tower Hill, the last tragic scene of many a drama in the history of England. As soon as the eye rests on that immense pile of buildings, once the royal residence and the stateprison, the imagination goes back through the long sweep of centuries, and represents to itself the woes that have found utterance within those gloomy recesses without falling upon a human ear. What griefs, what unavailing sighs, have those walls shut |