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are only exercising a form of English hospitality practised in the seventeenth century.* When the Yankee says "I guess," he is but using the English of Chau- · cer and Shakespeare.† So when he speaks of "fall" instead of autumn, he is following Dryden. In calling a person "homely" instead of plain, he has the warrant of Milton.§ So "whittle" is found to be old; "slick" also,¶ "freshet," ** and many other so-called Americanisms.

There is no danger of the reader's underestimating the influence of England upon America, or the great virtues of the English people. But these subjects, important as they are in themselves, have no bearing upon the question which I have undertaken to discuss-the origin of our republican institutions. These institutions have moulded, and will serve hereafter to mould, the nation's life. The questions how and whence they came to America should interest not alone the scholar, but every one who cares for the future of his country. The past holds for us something beyond the mere pleasure of a romance. It lays before us as a lesson the experi

* Int. to Lowell's "Biglow Papers,” vol. ii.

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"Of twenty yere of age he was, I gesse."-Chaucer.

"Better far, I guess,

That we do make our entrance several ways."

"1st Part Henry VI.," act ii. sc. 1.

They had their name hence."-Milton, "Comus."

| In "Hakewith on Providence," 1627, given by Johnson.

¶ Used by Chapman, 1603, Sir Thomas Browne, and Fuller.

**

"All fish from sea or shore,

Freshet or purling brook."-Milton.

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ence of other nations; of those alone who have the sagacity to profit by that experience can it be said that "histories make men wise."

The method in which this subject has been heretofore generally treated is familiar to every reader, and it is a method which has at least the merit of simplicity, obviating the necessity of all original investigation. Looking back at American literature, we find that, to all questions regarding the origin of our un-English institutions, the stock-answer has been returned, that they were invented by those mysterious and inspired prophetic souls who founded Massachusetts. Of all the fabled heroes of antiquity, architects of empires, or benefactors of the human race, none, in popular opinion, have ever equalled in depth of thought and fecundity of invention the plain artisans and farmers who crossed the ocean in the Mayflower, or those who followed them in the next few years. What a marvellous magician's bath the Atlantic must have been two centuries and a half ago, when even a sail across its waters could work such miracles! If any other nation succeeds in originating a single great institution in an ordinary lifetime, it gains historic fame. In this case, the mere voyage from England sufficed, we are expected to believe, for the invention of at least three of the first magnitude.

At the head of the list stands the free-school system of the United States. For this claim we have the authority of James Russell Lowell, who calls it the invention of our Puritan ancestors in Massachusetts.* The second is the township system. This also originated in the same quarter, according to Palfrey, the historian of New Eng

* Essay on "New England Two Hundred Years Ago," Among My Books.

land.* The third is the system of recording deeds and mortgages. This also is claimed to have been devised in America, presumably in Massachusetts.+ As the settlers of New England certainly did possess these important institutions, while the Englishmen at home as certainly did not, the inference that they were invented in America is a natural one, if we set out with the assumption that England is the only other country in the world. However, a little light is thrown upon the subject when we learn that free schools existed, not only among the Romans, but among the Moors nine centuries ago; that the township system prevailed in Central Asia probably before the dispersion of the human race, and now exists in upper India; and that deeds were recorded in Egypt long before the Christian era.

These are but specimens of American institutions, and simple illustrations of the ordinary mode of dealing with their history by modern writers, for we may notice that our ancestors never made such claims. Some persons might think that it was characteristic Yankee talltalk, indulged in only among uneducated people, to credit their origin to Massachusetts and to transplanted Englishmen; but this, as we have already seen, is incorrect. Most English and all American histories have been written after the same model.+

* i. 275.

"New American Cyclopædia," article "Recording."

Another example will illustrate this even more fully. In 1836, Edward Everett delivered an address in commemoration of the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of Harvard College. Referring to the appropriation by the General Court of Massachusetts of the sum of four hundred pounds for the establishment of that institution, he said: "I must appeal to gentlemen around me, whether before the year 1636 they know of such a thing as a grant of money

In all this there is nothing remarkable; for to persons accustomed from early education never to look beyond Great Britain for anything American, our institutions, when not recognized as English, may well seem to be original. In addition is the fact that such a mode of dealing with one's ancestors has, until a recent date, seemed patriotic among all nations. It is to be hoped, however, that to the present generation, extending its researches in all directions, these institutions will not be less dear or less important because found to have about them some of the halo of republican antiquity, reaching back further than the voyage of the immortal Mayflower.

We speak of this as the "new world," but geologically it is the old. Modern scientists, in studying the records furnished by the rocks, have discovered that it was in being when Europe was submerged beneath the waves.

by the English House of Commons to found or endow a place of education. I think there is no such grant before that period, nor till long after; and therefore I believe it is strictly within the bounds of truth to say that the General Court of Massachusetts, which met in September, 1636, is the first body in which the people by their representatives ever gave their own money to found a place of education." The same kind of language was used at the 250th anniversary in 1886. No such thing being known in England, therefore it never existed. We shall see hereafter how, half a century before the time of which Mr. Everett spoke, the people of Holland, through their representatives, had given all the buildings and a magnificent endowment for the establishment of two free universities, one of which (that of Leyden) is among the most distinguished in the world. Many of the men who settled in Massachusetts came from Leyden, and Harvard College itself was established on land settled by colonists led by Thomas Hooker, a refugee English preacher who had lived in Holland for three years. Strange enough such language as that of the Governor of Massachusetts would have sounded to the men who made the grant of four hundred pounds.

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So of our system of government. The political movements of the last century have worked such changes across the ocean that to-day the Constitution of the United States is almost the oldest in existence outside of Asia. But our leading institutions go back much further. When historians come to study them, as they have studied dynasties, they will find that here also America is the old and much of Europe the new barbaric world. In the construction of the republic, our fathers had the same advantages which a man of fortune possesses who sets out to build a new house. Although not rich in gold, they were the heirs of all the wisdom. of the ages. They were hampered by no old structure to be modernized, and by no old materials to be put to use. A continent lay before them on which to build; the whole world was their quarry, and all the past their architects. They showed marvellous skill, wisdom, and foresight in the selection of their plans, in the choice of their materials, and in their methods of construction. All this is honor enough, without endowing them with the lamp of an Aladdin or the wand of a magician.

Taking the word in its broad sense, the institutions of America are largely Puritan, so that we must look to the growth of Puritanism to understand their introduction. But when we seek for their origin, we should send our thoughts far beyond the little island of England or the narrow confines of Massachusetts. National institutions are like great trees standing in a field, which, though showing only a trunk and branches above the surface, have another frame as large spreading through the soil below. Those of America shelter to-day over sixty million people. Their roots are too large to be contained in any one small quarter of the globe.

Two great elements have contributed to make Amer