were unable to provide at once for the transport of the whole number, it was agreed that their pastor should remain for the present at Leyden, with the remainder of the flock, whose future steps should be guided by the reports of the first adventurers. Few events in Puritan history are more touching, or more worthy of being had in remembrance, than the last parting (for such it proved) of Robinson, the Brownist minister, and his exiled and heroic band of Christian emigrants. Before the day of embarkation came, the magistrates bore a voluntary and honourable testimony to their good conduct. Several of the Dutch were anxious to go with them, and would have contributed largely to the expenses of the enterprise. But the English character was then, as now, retiring, sensitive, and jealous. They would have no associates who did not speak the English tongue and obey the English monarch. "In a few generations," too, "their own posterity would become Dutch!" So strong their nationality after all their persecutions.

When the ship was ready to sail, the whole congregation met. There was a solemn fast and prayer. Robinson then addressed them in a farewell speech, "breathing," says a Republican historian, "a freedom of opinion, and an independence of authority, such as then were hardly known in the world." Happily, the speech is on record, and we know that the exiled pastor of Leyden spoke in a much wiser and much holier strain. He impressed the lessons of piety, not of a vainglorious self-sufficiency, or a selfwilled independence. "I charge you," said he, "that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow the Lord Jesus Christ." There were few men then alive who could have given utterance to the sentiments which followed. It bespeaks a wisdom which few had yet attained. "The Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of His holy word. I cannot sufficiently bewail the condition of the reformed churches, which are come to a period in religion, and will go at present no further than the instruments of their reformation. Luther and Calvin were great and shining lights in their times, yet they penetrated not into the whole counsel of God. The Lutherans cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw and the Calvinists, you see, stick fast where they were left by that great man of God. I beseech you remember it 'tis an article of your Church covenant-that you shall be ready to receive whatever truth shall be made known to you from

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the written word of God." The character of the New England Puritans would have come down to us free from some dark spots, had the audience comprehended the wisdom of their pastor's admonition. In conclusion, he advised them to shake off the name of Brownists-in which, it seems, they took delight-as a mere nickname, which made religion odious." A parting feast was given at the pastor's house, " where," writes Edward Winslow, who was one of the guests, "after tears, we refreshed ourselves with singing of psalms, making joyful melody in our hearts, as well as with the voice: indeed, it was the sweetest melody that ever mine ears heard. Overwhelmed as they were with tender emotions, they had dauntless spirits, and a sure confidence in God. The whole congregation moved together to Delft Haven, where the emigrants embarked. Prayer was again offered by their beloved pastor; tears in abundance were shed; and they parted in deep silence, "for the abundance of sorrow." Cheers, and noisy demonstrations, were never much in vogue among the Puritans; but "a volley of small shot, and three pieces of ordnance," announced to those on shore the hearty courage and affectionate adieus of those on board. "And so," continues Winslow, "lifting up our hands to one another, and our hearts to the Lord, we departed."

On the 5th of August, 1620, the two vessels, freighted with the New England colonists, sailed from the Southampton River. Within a few days, the "Mayflower" was found to need repairs, and they put back to Dartmouth. Eight days were lost, and again they sailed. Now the captain of the "Speedwell" feigned or felt alarm, and insisted on returning to Plymouth. Here the "Speed"well" was dismissed, and some of the company, disheartened, gave up the enterprise, and went back to London. A hundred souls were crowded into the little "Mayflower;" and on the 6th of September, 1620, took their last leave of England. Their feelings, we may believe, were softened towards their native land; and they thought, with a melancholy pride and thankfulness, of her glory and her greatness. One who has left a narrative of a somewhat later voyage of the Puritans, has given us their parting ejaculation as they lost sight of the land of their fathers. The same words, no doubt, escaped the lips, or swelled unexpressed in the bosoms of the earlier voyagers on board the adventurous Mayflower." They did not say, "Farewell Babylon! Farewell Rome!" but "FAREWELL, DEAR ENGLAND !"

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A voyage of sixty-three days brought them in sight of America. They landed at Cape Cod, where the two great sea-port towns of Plymouth and Boston were shortly founded, names which to this day attest the grateful patriotism, no less than the energy and hope, of the Pilgrim Fathers. For Plymouth was so named in remembrance of the Christian sympathy they had received from the last town in which they had sought refuge from the perils of the sea in England; and Boston was a memorial of their earlier home in Lincolnshire, before intolerance had forced them into the swamps of Holland. In front of the Town-hall of Plymouth, in New England, there lies a dark rough mass of granite, which is looked upon with reverence by every true son of the greatest republic the world ever saw. On this the pilgrims landed: upon this stone they stepped; upon this rock they took possession of an heritage of boundless extent; here they entered upon a new career, of which, could they have foreseen the consequences, it is a question not easily resolved, whether more of awe and fear, or of gratitude and exultation, would have taken possession of their souls. The stone, hallowed by such associations, has been rolled from its native bed upon the sea-beach, and placed, a national monument, touching and appropriate, in the midst of a city, the earliest that can boast the origin, founded by the Puritans.

History of the Early Puritans.

JAMES WATT.

LORD JEFFREY.

MR. JAMES WATT, the great improver of the steam-engine, died on the 25th of August, 1819, at his seat of Heathfield, near Birmingham, in the eighty-fourth year of his age.

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This name fortunately needs no commemoration of ours; for he that bore it survived to see it crowned with undisputed and unenvied honours and many generations will probably have passed away before it shall have gathered "all its fame." We have said that Mr. Watt was the great improver of the steam-engine; but in truth, as to all that is admirable in its structure, or vast in its utility, he should rather be described as its inventor. It was by his inventions that its action was so regulated as to make it capable of being applied to the finest and most delicate manufactures, and its power so increased as

to set weight and solidity at defiance. By this admirable contrivance, it has become a thing stupendous alike for its force and its flexibility for the prodigious power which it can exert, and the ease, and precision, and ductility, with which that power can be varied, distributed, and applied. The trunk of an elephant, that can pick up a pin or rend an oak, is as nothing to it. It can engrave a seal, and crush masses of obdurate metal before it-draw out, without breaking, a thread as fine as gossamer, and lift a ship of war like a bauble in the air. It can embroider muslin, and forge anchors-cut steel into ribands, and impel loaded vessels against the fury of the winds and waves.

It would be difficult to estimate the value of the benefits which these inventions have conferred upon this country. There is no branch of industry that has not been indebted to them; and, in all the most material, they have not only widened most magnificently the field of its exertions, but multiplied a thousandfold the amount of its productions. It was our improved steamengine, in short, that fought the battles of Europe, and exalted and sustained through the late tremendous contest, the political greatness of our land. It is the same great power which now enables us to pay the interest of our debt, and to maintain the arduous struggle in which we are still engaged (1819) with the skill and capital of countries less oppressed with taxation. But these are poor and narrow views of its importance. It has increased indefinitely the mass of human comforts and enjoyments; and rendered cheap and accessible, all over the world, the materials of wealth and prosperity. It has armed the feeble hand of man, in short, with a power to which no limits can be assigned; completed the dominion of mind over the most refractory qualities of matter, and laid a sure foundation for all those future miracles of mechanic power which are to aid and reward the labours of after generations. It is to the genius of one man, too, that all this is mainly owing! And certainly no man ever bestowed such a gift on his kind. blessing is not only universal, but unbounded; and the fabled inventors of the plough and the loom, who were deified by the erring gratitude of their rude contemporaries, conferred less important benefits on mankind than the inventor of our present steam-engine.

The

This will be the fame of Watt with future generations; and it is sufficient for his race and his country. But to those to whom

he more immediately belonged, who lived in his society and enjoyed his conversation, it is not, perhaps, the character in which he will be most frequently recalled-most deeply lamented—or even most highly admired. Independently of his great attainments in mechanics, Mr. Watt was an extraordinary and in many respects a wonderful man. Perhaps no individual in his age possessed so much and such varied and exact information-had read so much, or remembered what he had read so accurately and well. He had infinite quickness of apprehension, a prodigious memory, and a certain rectifying and methodizing power of understanding, which extracted something precious out of all that was presented to it. His stores of miscellaneous knowledge were immense, and yet less astonishing than the command he had at all times over them. It seemed as if every subject that was casually started in conversation with him, had been that which he had been last occupied in studying and exhausting-such was the copiousness, the precision, and the admirable clearness of the information which he poured out upon it, without effort or hesitation. Nor was this promptitude and compass of knowledge confined in any degree to the studies connected with his ordinary pursuits. That he should have been minutely and extensively skilled in chemistry, and the arts, and in most of the branches of physical science, might perhaps have been conjectured. But it could not have been inferred from his usual occupations, and probably is not generally known, that he was curiously learned in many branches of antiquity, metaphysics, medicine, and etymology, and perfectly at home in all the details of architecture, music, and law. He was well acquainted too with most of the modern languages—and familiar with their most recent literature. Nor was it at all extraordinary to hear the great mechanician and engineer detailing and expounding, for hours together, the metaphysical theories of the German logicians, or criticizing the measures or the matter of the German poetry.

His astonishing memory was aided, no doubt in a great measure, by a still higher and rarer faculty-by his power of digesting and arranging in its proper place all the information he received, and of casting aside and rejecting, as it were instinctively, whatever was worthless or immaterial. Every conception that was suggested to his mind, seemed instantly to take its proper place among its other rich furniture; and to be condensed into the smallest and most convenient form. He never appeared, therefore, to be at all