as Ireton fronted death with on the battle-field of Naseby, or those who
stalked with Cromwell over the broken wall of Drogheda, smiting, "in the
name of the Lord," old and young, "both maid, and little children."
Methinks I see the sunset light flooding the river valley, the western
hills stretching to the horizon, overhung with trees gorgeous and
glowing with the tints of autumn,--a mighty flower-garden, blossoming
under the spell of the enchanter, Frost; the rushing river, with its
graceful water-curves and white foam; and a steady murmur, low, deep
voices of water, the softest, sweetest sound of Nature, blends with the
sigh of the south wind in the pine-tops. But these hard-featured saints
of the New Canaan "care for none of these things." The stout hearts
which beat under their leathern doublets are proof against the sweet
influences of Nature. They see only "a great and howling wilderness,
where be many Indians, but where fish may be taken, and where be meadows
for ye subsistence of cattle," and which, on the whole, "is a
comfortable place to accommodate a company of God's people upon, who
may, with God's blessing, do good in that place for both church and
state." (Vide petition to the General Court, 1653.)

In reading the journals and narratives of the early settlers of New
England nothing is more remarkable than the entire silence of the worthy
writers in respect to the natural beauty or grandeur of the scenery amid
which their lot was cast. They designated the grand and glorious
forest, broken by lakes and crossed by great rivers, intersected by a
thousand streams more beautiful than those which the Old World has given
to song and romance, as "a desert and frightful wilderness." The wildly
picturesque Indian, darting his birch canoe down the Falls of the
Amoskeag or gliding in the deer-track of the forest, was, in their view,
nothing but a "dirty tawnie," a "salvage heathen," and "devil's imp."
Many of them were well educated,--men of varied and profound erudition,