martyrdom." Theirs was the gentle temper of Christian
kindness; the rigorous observance of reciprocal justice; the
unconquerable soul of conscious integrity. Worldly fame has
been parsimonious of her favor to the memory of those
generous companions. Their numbers were small; their stations
in life obscure; the object of their enterprise unostentatious; the
theatre of their exploits remote; how could they possibly be
favorites of worldly Fame--that common crier, whose existence
is only known by the assemblage of multitudes; that pander of
wealth and greatness, so eager to haunt the palaces of fortune,
and so fastidious to the houseless dignity of virtue; that
parasite of pride, ever scornful to meekness, and ever
obsequious to insolent power; that heedless trumpeter, whose
ears are deaf to modest merit, and whose eyes are blind to
bloodless, distant excellence?

When the persecuted companions of Robinson, exiles from
their native land, anxiously sued for the privilege of removing a
thousand leagues more distant to an untried soil, a rigorous
climate, and a savage wilderness, for the sake of reconciling
their sense of religious duty with their affections for their
country, few, perhaps none of them, formed a conception of
what would be, within two centuries, the result of their
undertaking. When the jealous and niggardly policy of their
British sovereign denied them even that humblest of requests,
and instead of liberty would barely consent to promise
connivance, neither he nor they might be aware that they were
laying the foundations of a power, and that he was sowing the
seeds of a spirit, which, in less than two hundred years, would
stagger the throne of his descendants, and shake his united