An entire ship's company of Columbuses is what the world never saw. It
is not wise to form any theory and fit our facts to it, as a man in a
hurry is apt to cram his traveling-bag, with a total disregard of shape
or texture. But perhaps it may be found that the facts will only fit
comfortably together on a single plan, namely, that the fathers did have
a conception (which those will call grand who regard simplicity as a
necessary element of grandeur) of founding here a commonwealth on
those two eternal bases of Faith and Work; that they had, indeed, no
revolutionary ideas of universal liberty; but yet, what answered the
purpose quite as well, an abiding faith in the brotherhood of man and
the fatherhood of God; and that they did not so much propose to make all
things new, as to develop the latent possibilities of English law and
English character by clearing away the fences by which the abuse of
the one was gradually discommoning the other from the broad fields of
natural right. They were not in advance of their age, as it is called,
for no one who is so can ever work profitably in it; but they were alive
to the highest and most earnest thinking of their time.
* * * * *
=_218._= From an "Essay on Dryden.
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