colonists are alike in their respect for the past. In the New
England settlements, although not at first in Virginia, there was
respect for learning and for an educated clergy. The colonists
revered the Bible. They maintained a stubborn regard for the
Common Law of England. Even amid all the excitement of a
successful rebellion from the mother country, this Common Law
still held the Americans to the experience of the inescapable
past.

Indeed, as the reader of today lifts his eyes from the pages of
the books written in America during the seventeenth century, and
tries to meditate upon the general difference between them and
the English books written during the same period, he will be
aware of the firmness with which the conservative forces held on
this side of the Atlantic. It was only one hundred years from the
Great Armada of 1588 to the flight of James Second, the last of
the Stuart Kings. With that Revolution of 1688 the struggles
characteristic of the seventeenth century in England came to an
end. A new working basis is found for thought, politics, society,
literature. But while those vast changes had been shaking
England, two generations of American colonists had cleared their
forests, fought the savages, organized their townships and their
trade, put money in their purses, and lived, though as yet hardly
suspecting it, a life that was beginning to differentiate them
from the men of the Old World. We must now glance at the various
aspects of this isolated life of theirs, as it is revealed in
their books.

CHAPTER II. THE FIRST COLONIAL LITERATURE