By GEORGE SANDYS.

The parts I speak of are the most renowned countries and kingdoms; once the seats of most glorious and triumphant empires; the theaters of valor and heroical actions; the soils enriched with all earthly felicities; the places where Nature hath produced her wonderful works; where arts and sciences have been invented and perfected; where wisdom, virtue, policy, and civility, have been planted, have flourished; and, lastly, where God himself did place his own commonwealth, gave laws and oracles, inspired his prophets, sent angels to converse with men; above all, where the Son of God descended to become man; where he honored the earth with his beautiful steps, wrought the works of our redemption, triumphed over death, and ascended into glory; which countries, once so glorious and famous for their happy estate, are now, through vice and ingratitude, become the most deplored spectacles of extreme misery; the wild beasts of mankind having broken in upon them, and rooted out all civility, and the pride of a stern and barbarous tyrant possessing the thrones of ancient and just dominion. Who, aiming only at the height of greatness and sensuality, hath in tract of time reduced so great and goodly a part of the world to that lamentable distress and servitude, under which (to the astonishment of the understanding beholders) it now faints and groaneth. Those rich lands at this present remain waste and overgrown with bushes, receptacles of wild beasts, of thieves, and murderers; large territories dispeopled or thinly inhabited; goodly cities made desolate; sumptuous buildings become ruins; glorious temples either subverted or prostituted to impiety; true religion discountenanced and oppressed; all nobility extinguished; no light of learning permitted, nor virtue cherished; violence and rapine insulting over all, and leaving no security except to an abject mind, and unlooked-on poverty; which calamities of theirs, so great and deserved, are to the rest of the world as threatening instructions. For assistance wherein, I have not only related what I saw of their present condition, but, so far as convenience might permit, presented a brief view of the former estates and first antiquities of those peoples and countries; thence to draw a right image of the frailty of man, the mutability of whatever is worldly, and assurance that, as there is nothing unchangeable saving God, so nothing stable but by his grace and protection.

By the Rev. COTTON MATHER.

There were more than a few attempts of the English to people, to settle and improve the parts of New England which were to the northward of New Plymouth, but the designs of those attempts being aimed no higher than the advancement of some worldly interests, a constant series of disasters confounded them, until there was a plantation erected on the nobler designs of Christianity, and that plantation, though it has had more adversaries, perhaps, than any one upon earth, yet, having obtained help from God, it continues to this day. There have been very fine settlements in the northeast regions, but what is become of them? I have heard that one of our ministers, once preaching to a congregation there, urged them to approve themselves a religious people from this consideration: that otherwise they would contradict the main object of planting this wilderness, whereupon a well-known person, then in the assembly, cried out: “Sir, you are mistaken, you think you are preaching to the people at the Bay; our main end was to catch fish.” Truly ’twere to have been wished that something more excellent had been the main end of the settlements in that brave country, which we have, even long since the arrival of that more pious colony at the Bay, now seen dreadfully unsettled, no less than twice, at least, by the sword of the heathen, after they had been replenished by many hundreds of people who had thriven to many thousands of pounds, and all the force of the Bay, too, to assist them in maintaining their settlements. But the same or like inauspicious things attended many other endeavors to make plantations, on such a main end, in several other parts of the country, before the arrival of the Massachusetts colony, which was formed on more glorious aims.

REMARKS ON THE CATALOGUE OF PLANTATIONS.

(1) There are few towns to be now seen on our list but what were existing in this land before the dreadful Indian war which befell us twenty years ago; and there are few towns broken up within the then Massachusetts line by that war but what have revived out of their ashes. Nevertheless the many calamities which have ever since been wasting the country have so nip the growth of it, that its later progress hath held no proportion with what was from the beginning; but yet with such variety, that while the trained companies of some towns are no bigger than they were thirty or forty years ago, others are as big again.

(2) The calamities that have carried off the inhabitants of our several towns have not been all of one sort. Pestilential sicknesses have made fearful havoc in divers places, where the sound have not perhaps been enough to tend the sick, while others have not had one touch from the Angel of Death, and the sword hath cut off scores in sundry places, when others, it may be, have not lost a single man by that avenger.

(3) ’Tis no unusual, though no universal experiment, among us, that while an excellent, laborious, illuminating ministry has been continued in a town, the place has thriven to admiration; but ever since that man’s time they have gone down the wind in all their interests. The gospel has evidently been the making of all our towns, and the blessings of the Upper have been accompanied with the blessings of the Nether Springs. Memorable also is the remark of Slingsby Beibel, Esq., in his most judicious “Book of the Interests of Europe:” “Were not the cold climate of New England supplied by good laws and discipline, the barrenness of the country would never have brought people to it, nor have advanced it in consideration and formidableness above the other English plantations exceeding it much in fertility and other inviting qualities.”

(4) Well may New England lay claim to the name it wears, and to a room in the tenderest affections of its mother, the happy island. For as there are few of our towns but what have their namesakes in England, so the reason why most of our towns are called what they are, is because the chief of the first inhabitants would thus bear up the names of the particular places there from whence they came.

(5) I have heard an aged saint, near his death, thus cheerfully express himself: “Well, I am going to heaven, and I will there tell the faithful who are gone long since from New England thither, that though they who gathered in our churches are all dead and gone, yet the churches are still alive, with as numerous flocks of Christians as were ever among them.” Concerning most of the churches in our catalogue, the report thus carried unto heaven, I must now also send through the earth; but if with “as numerous,” we could in every respect say as gracious, what joy to all the saints, both in heaven and on earth, might be from thence occasioned.—Magnalia Christi Americana.

By the Rev. COTTON MATHER.

To take a poor child, especially an orphan left in poverty, and bestow a liberal education on it, is an admirable charity, yea, it may draw after it a long train of good, and may interest you in all the good done by him whom you have educated. Hence, also, what is done for schools, for colleges, and for hospitals is done for the general good. The endowment and maintenance of these is at once to do good to many.

But alas, how much of the silver and the gold is buried in hands where it is little better than if conveyed back to the mines whence it came. How much of it is employed to as little purpose as what arrives at Hindoostan, where a great part of it, after some circulation, is by the Moguls lodged in subterraneous caves never to see the light again. The Christian whose faith and hope are genuine, acts not thus.

Sometimes elaborate compositions may be prepared for the press, works of great bulk, and of greater worth, by which the best interests of knowledge and virtue might be considerably promoted, but they lie, like the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda, in silent neglect, and are likely to continue in that state, till God inspires some wealthy persons nobly to subscribe to their publication, and by this generous application of their property to bring them abroad. The names of such noble benefactors to mankind ought to live as long as the works themselves live; and when the works do any good, what these have done towards the publishing of them, ought to be “told for a memorial of them.” He urges gentlemen of leisure to seek “some honorable and agreeable employments,” and says, “I will mention one: The Pythagoreans forbade men’s eating their own brains, or keeping their good thoughts to themselves.” The incomparable Boyle observes that as to religious books in general, “those that have been written by laymen, and especially by gentlemen, have (cÆteris paribus) been better received and more effectual than those published by clergymen.” Mr. Boyle’s were certainly so. Men of quality have frequently attained such accomplishments in languages and science that they become prodigies of literature. Their libraries also have stupendous collections approaching toward Vatican or Bodleian dimensions. It were much to be wished that persons of wealth and station would qualify themselves for the use of the pen, as well as of the sword, and deserve this eulogium: “They have written excellent things.” An English person of quality in his treatise entitled “A view of the soul,” has the following passage: “It is certainly the highest dignity, if not the greatest happiness of which human nature is capable in the vale below, to have the soul so far enlightened as to become a mirror, conduit or conveyor of God’s truth to others.” It is a bad motto for a man of capacity to say, “My understanding is unfruitful.” Gentlemen, consider what subjects may most properly and usefully fall under your cultivation. Your pens may stab atheism and vice more effectually than other men’s can. If out of your tribe there come those who handle the pen of the writer, they will do uncommon execution. One of them has ingenuously said, “Though I know of some functions, yet I know no truths of religion that like the shew-bread belong to the priests alone.” * * *

To do good is a sure and pleasant way effectually to bespeak God’s blessings on ourselves. Who so likely to find blessings as the men who are blessings? While we work for God, he certainly will work for us, and ours—will do for us more than we have done for him; “more than we can ask or think.” A good action is its own reward.

But what shall be done for the good man in the heavenly world? His part and work in the city of God are at present incomprehensible to us, but the kindness which his God will show him in the strong city will be truly marvelous. The attempts which the Christian has made to fill this world with righteous things, are so many tokens for good to him, that he shall have a portion in that world wherein shall dwell nothing but righteousness. He will be welcomed with “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

I will conclude with a declaration which I will boldly maintain. It is this: Were a man able to write in seven languages, could he daily converse with all the sweets of the liberal sciences to which the most accomplished make pretensions; were he to entertain himself with all ancient and modern history; and could he feast continually on the curiosities which the different branches of learning may discover to him, all this would not afford the ravishing satisfaction which he might find in relieving the distresses of a poor, miserable neighbor, nor would it bear any comparison with the heartfelt delight which he might have by doing service to the kingdom of our great Savior in the world.