who had been silenced by Archbishop Laud. In 1635 Peter Bulkeley, and some families with him, emigrated and settled themselves at Musketaquid, which they named Concord. John Eliot, the English "apostle to the Indians,” had made the red faces friendly. Bulkeley had brought with him the large sum of six thousand pounds, which he devoted to the welfare of those who accompanied him. He gave a good library to Harvard College. In that same year, 1635, also emigrated Thomas Emerson, of an honourable family in Durham, whose son married one of the Bulkeley family at Concord.

The marching of Peter Bulkeley and his friends to the place where their descendants still reside was through and into a wilderness. It is described by one of their number as 66 a toyle of some dayes." "This poore people, populate this howling desert, marching manfully on, the Lord assisting, through the greatest difficulties, and greater labours than any with such weak means have done." There was "hard work for many an honest gentleman." In 1835 Emerson was invited to deliver an address on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the settlement of Concord, and in the course of it he gave a touching picture of the little band of founders:

"They proceeded to build, under the shelter of the hill that extends for a mile along the north side of the Boston road, their first dwellings. The labours of a new plantation were repaid by its excitements. I seem to see them with their pious pastor addressing themselves to the work of clearing the land. Natives of another hemisphere, they beheld with curiosity all the

pleasing features of the American forest. The landscape before them was fair, if it was strange and rude. The little flower, which at this season stirs our woods and roadsides with its profuse blossoms, might attract even eyes as stern as theirs with its humble beauty. The useful pine lifted its cone into the frosty air. The maple, which is already making the forest gay with its autumn hues, reddened over those houseless men. The majestic summits of Wachusett and Monadnoc, towering in the horizon, invited the steps of adventure westward.

"As the season grew later they felt its inconveniences. Many were forced to go barefoot and bareleg, and some in time of frost and snow, 6 yet were they more healthy than now they are.' The land was low but healthy; and if, in common with all the settlements, they found the air of America very cold, they might say with Higginson, after his description of the other elements, that New England may boast of the element of fire more than all the rest; for all Europe is not able to afford to make so great fires as New England. A poor servant, that is to possess but fifty acres, may afford to give more wood for fire, as good as the world yields, than many noblemen in England.' Many were their wants, but more their privileges. The light struggled in through windows of oiled paper, but they read the word of God by it. They were fain to make use of their knees for a table, but their limbs were their own. Hard labour and spare diet they had, and off wooden trenchers, but they had peace and freedom, and the wailing of the tempest in the woods sounded kindlier in their ear than the smooth voice of the pre

lates at home in England. There is no people,' said their pastor to his little flock of exiles, but will strive to excel in something. What can we excel in, if not in holiness?'

When the war of the Revolution broke out, Concord bore an important part. It contained at that time about 1300 inhabitants, and no other place of its size in America furnished so much aid to Washington. In its records is this entry : “Since General Washington at Cambridge is not able to give but $2.48 the cord for wood for the army, it is voted that this town encourage the inhabitants to supply the army by paying $2 per cord over and above the General's price to such as shall carry wood thither." They furnished hay to the army in the same generous way, and when Boston was suffering, they relieved its people with grain and money. A provincial Congress was held at Concord in 1774. During the year 1775-76, when Washington had his headquarters at Cambridge, he used the Harvard buildings for barracks, and the university was for the time. transferred to Concord.

In his address Emerson reviewed with just pride the history of his town. It was fortunate and favoured, he said, in having received so large an infusion of both of the most important periods of the country - the Planting and the Revolutionary. Its true story would exhibit a community almost exclusively agricultural, distinguished by simplicity, contentment, love of justice, and religious character. And yet more sacred influences have mingled here with the stream of human life," he says; the merit of its famous men "sheds a perfume less sweet than do the sacrifices of private

66

virtue." There are many old stories told in Concord which justify the high character claimed for it by Emerson. For instance, when, after their repulse at Concord Bridge, some of the retreating British soldiers fell wounded at various points along the road leading toward Boston, they were taken into the homes of those whom they had invaded and tenderly nursed. Some of them recovered and remained through life in the town, captives of this practical love of enemies. In Hawthorne's posthumous tale, the conversation between Septimius and Rose as they see the British soldiers approaching, their horror at the thought of enmity with such brave fellows, is conceived in the true spirit of the Concordians of that day.

"Here," said Emerson, 66 are no ridiculous laws, no eavesdropping legislators, no hanging of witches, no ghosts, no whipping of Quakers, no unnatural crimes. The tone of the records rises with the dignity of the event. These soiled and musty books are luminous and electric within. The old town-clerks did not spell very correctly, but they contrive to make pretty intelligible the will of a free and just community. Frugal our fathers were, very frugal, though for the most part they deal generously by their minister, and provide well for the schools and the poor. If at any time, in common with most of our towns, they have carried this economy to the verge of a vice, it is to be remembered that a town is, in many respects, a financial corporation. They economise that they may sacrifice. They stint and higgle in the price of a pew that they may send two hundred soldiers to General Washington to keep Great Britain at bay. For splendour there must

That the head of the

somewhere be rigid economy. house may go brave, the members must go plainly clad, and the town must save that the State may spend."

The earnestness with which Emerson dwells upon the details of the story reveals that therein lay the root of his own character. And when, in the end, he expressed the hope that "the little society of men who now for a few years fish in this river, plough the fields it washes, mow the grass, and reap the corn," might be worthy of such ancestors and antecedents, we can recognise, what his hearers of 1835 then could not, that the young Harvard scholar was to repeat in a higher plane the heroism of his ancestor the Pastor Bulkeley to lead a band from old theologic settlements, and make the wilderness bloom with nobler thoughts and aims.