courage seems not to have been diminished, for it was not long until a certain Barbara became his wife.

He left several children, of whom his daughter Lora, as appears by his will, died before him :

"My will is, that out of my whole estate my funeral charges be taken, and my body be buried in a decent manner: and if I die in Duxbury, my body be laide as neare as convenient to my two daughters, Lora Standish, my daughter, and Mary Standish, my daughter

in-law."

Lord, guide

"Lora Standish is my name. my heart that I may do thy will. Also fill my hands with such convenient skill as may conduce to virtue, void of shame, and I will give the glory to thy name."

The country about Plymouth is naturally hilly, rocky, and barren, and though there is much of almost primeval forest, yet in its vicinity, patches of clearing, rendered fruitful by industry, and containing comfortable and pretty houses, neighbor each other, along the sea-shore, almost continually.

Cape Cod, in the harbor of which the May-Flower first found shelter on her arrival on our coasts, is “an out-of-theway nook, almost cut off from the rest of the world." Arms of the sea, with extensive salt marshes, perforate it so that it may be called half land, half water, the land sandy and covered with grass and dwarf timber, with here and there a spot brought under some degree of cultivation. And the inhabitants are in keeping with their dwellings, depending chiefly upon the sea for subsistence. Many of them, however, when the fishing season is over,

resort to shoemaking, or some other occupation, by which they eke out their subsistence.

The country above the marshes is a remarkable instance "of the triumph of skill and industry over natural obstacles, and nothing can exceed the neatness of the villages, and the comfortable look of the inhabitants."

One of the townships of the Cape bears the name of Brewster, and from Truro to

Provincetown has been called the Venice

of New-England. The harbor itself is

one of the finest in the whole line of coast, being completely land-locked, and the entrance accessible, in all winds, to vessels of the largest class. The curve of land by which it is formed is called Longpoint, and at its extremity is a lighthouse, and here, three quarters of a mile from the shore, the May-Flower came to anchor.

Considerable remains of the original forest of" oaks, pines, juniper, sassafras, and other sweet woods," are still to be found about Provincetown. The wood for the most part is stunted, though there

are

some specimens of a fine growth. The pilgrims remarked the whales, and regretted that they had no means of capturing them their descendants have made the Cape famous for its whale fisheries. Provincetown is described as a few streets of frame-houses, built on sand, overhung by sand, and approached by sand; and altogether of a wild, singular, and outof-the-way appearance. It is thriving and enterprising, the inhabitants mostly fishers and sailors—their fishing boats perfect models. In the hills behind the town are many places as wild as when first explored by Standish and his brave companions, and imagination is here naturally borne back to the time, two centuries ago, when all the northern states were a wilderness, silent and desolate, save for the hut and the whoop of the Indian; and when the battered May-Flower, pregnant with the mightiest results, rounded the point, making no noise louder than the voice of prayer. From the feeble planting of Plymouth, a grand republic is sprung up, and the influence reflected back upon the old world is incalculable.

In our next number we shall invite the reader to accompany us in an examination of some of the relics and other attractions at Plymouth.

THE RELIGIOUS SCARECROW OF

HAVE

THE AGE.

[AVE we reason to fear the Pope in this country? Of course we do not mean his questionable holiness, personally, but the system which he represents and names-Popery itself. Of himself personally or officially, it would be a very grave joke for us to entertain a single anxiety. He sits in the Vatican, only the shadow of what he once wasthe impersonation of decrepitude, smothered under the obsolete and grotesque habiliments of a long gone age, and mumbling from a toothless mouth the language of mere imbecility. What then would he become here, where our public decorum would not allow him any public state, were he even, by the possible accidents of these odd times, to be tossed across the waters? The poor old man, considered as a poor old functionary, almost deserves our sympathy-there is such a contrast between his present and his past figure-his power, once sublime, even in its iniquitous grandeur, has become such a paltry, impotent pretension. There is a great deal of practical farce going on still in the governments of the world, not excepting our own "great country;" but assuredly there is no more thorough tragic-comedy now enacted among the powers of the earth than the Popedom.

We confess we once were terribly panicsmitten at the prospects of Popery in this country; but we were then, with most of our fellow-citizens, in the dark respecting the subject and men see ghosts only in the dark. We ventured so far as even to publish a pamphlet expressly against his holiness- a rampant "bull," bellowing with denunciations, as much, we fear, as any of his own. But we have since become heartily ashamed of our cowardice, and never have met with a copy of the publication without "suppressing it. We feel a little malicious at his holiness, as we pen these lines, for having occasioned us such unnecessary trepidation.

We hardly know whether to consider it an apology for our alarm that the Christian public generally shared it-to such an extent in fact, that it became an almost universal infection. It was the mighty, invincible argument for almost every "religious enterprise" among us. Pulpit

orators

- religious platform speakerspalpitating Christian assemblies, could scarcely see anything above the moral horizon of the country, especially westward, but the triple tiara expanding out, like the celestial hemisphere, into a vast nightcap over the nation under which she was to lie down in a hopeless sleep, a moral nightmare. Now all this was doubtless honest; but it was exceedingly cowardly—it was all fudge-as events in Europe and this country are daily and irresistibly demonstrating. It was very pernicious, too, for it gave undue importance to Popery. It set the politicians to overvaluing (as we shall see directly) most egregiously the numerical availability of the Roman Catholics at the ballot-box, and it gave them that dangerous influence over the politics of the nation, which has been so undeservedly held by them for years, which has disgraced the country, and which now, thanks to the return of somewhat of our national self-respect, is about to be broken forever.

Popery has lost what we may call its essential force, even in Europe. This is our first argument against its probable dangers to our own country. Its central strength is sapped-its very citadel is undermined. The Abbe de la Mennais, some few years since, proclaimed on his return to Paris from Rome, "Withdraw the arms of Austria from Italy to-day, and to-morrow there will be an uprising of the people against the pope and the priesthood, from Turin to the Calabrias." The same could be said this moment in respect to the arms of France. Loyalty to Popery is dead this hour in Italy itself, and we should not be surprised, if at the next popular emeute of Europe (which will inevitably come) the head of a pope falls, and thus secures, by a demonstration which cannot be forgotten, the popular claims of Italy, as the decapitation of a Stuart did the rights of Englishmen.

What now is the influence of the Roman court in the affairs of Europe? Nothing at all. It is a significant fact that in the present struggle, involving more or less almost all the European courts, we hardly hear a reference to the pope. A few generations ago his diplomacy guided all the great movements of the continent.

What is a Pope's bull now-a-days? Nothing but a religious epistle to his eeclesiastics against heresy, Bible societies,

&c. A few generations ago it was the thunderbolt of Jove smiting a whole province, shaking a throne, or paralyzing an army.

What sovereign would now care for the pope's excommunication?—that terrific mystery at which the knees of kings a few centuries since smote together? We never hear of it any more as against rulers, and if it should be revived, it would be a joke in almost any court of the world.

The

Why? Because the prestige of Popery is gone-irrecoverably gone. The delusions of the Dark Ages are past; mankind have awakened from that thousand years' sleep, have risen up, rubbed their eyes, and found they had been dreaming. The people nearest to him-the Italians would now, if they could, chase the pope —the “vicegerent of God" as they once believed-off of their peninsula. courts of Europe recognize the popedom as an historical fact, still lingering, and therefore to be taken account of in some way or other in their conservative policy; but it is no longer a potential fact, in any respects, among them. The pope has little or nothing to do with them directly, except occasionally to act the puppet in the ceremonial of a coronation. Since the first French revolution (a great curse with a great many blessings) this has been about his significance in the affairs of Europe.

And this remark leads us to a second consideration, one which accounts for the declension of Popery, and at the same time renders it irreversible, viz., that it is founded in the modern and inevitable progress of the race. The world is outgrowing it; and that is the explanation of its late history. It may make efforts to retrieve itself—it may attempt to relate itself to the movements of states, as in the French reaction and in the politics of America-it may by Jesuitical agencies insinuate itself into the religious movements of anti-Catholic countries, as in the Tractarianism of Oxford-it may attempt to startle the remains of superstition among the multitudes by new trumpery, as the winking Madonnas or the coat of Treves; but they all ultimately fail, and, worse than that, they all react. Puseyism, as a project for Papalizing the Anglican Church, is now a determinate failure. The imposture at Treves excited the ridicule of Europe, and turned

thousands out of the ranks of Popery. The winking and nodding Madonnas have of late years become standing jokes in the newspapers of Christendom. It is too late in this working day of the world for such nonsense. Men-honest men-will either weep or laugh at it; but they will not respect it. The last of these obsolete follies is a proposed great convention at Rome, to decide the question of the “immaculate conception of the Virgin”—not the immaculate conception of Christ, as some of the papers of the day represent. It has long been a question among Papists whether the Virgin herself was born in a manner so different from the usual course of our common humanity, as to allow this preposterous ascription to her. A sort of œcumenical council is to convene for the purpose of discussing the somewhat delicate question-the "Mariolatry" of the Church depends rather seriously upon it. The newspapers are already handling the subject in their usual style; the Paris Univers, nevertheless, tries to affect a grave dignity in its allusion to it. What is it, however, but a preposterous attempt to mantain the superstitions of a past age --an attempt which cannot fail to incur the pity of thoughtful men, and the scorn of the profane.

This incompatibility of Popery with the progress of the age and its consequent decline, are seen by the wiser heads in Papal states. Michael Chevalier, the French journalist, and one of the ablest thinkers in France, expressed some time ago his apprehensions for Romanism in the Journal des Debats, in very unqualified language. "On comparing," he says, "the respective progress made since 1814 by non-Roman Catholic Christian nations with the advancement to power attained by Roman Catholic nations, one is struck with astonishment at the disproportion. England and the United States, which are Protestant powers, and Russia, a Greek power, have assumed to an incalculable degree the dominion of immense regions, destined to be densely peopled, and already teeming with a large population. . They have proved their superiority over the Roman Catholic nations of the New World, and have subjected them to a dictatorship which admits of no further dispute. To the authority of these two powers, England and the United States, after an attempt made by the former on

unexpected light on the question of the relative force of Popery; it is found to be scarcely one half of what it has been supposed to be.

66

Unquestionably," Monsieur Chevalier; and "unquestionably," because "the balance of power" between the enlightened and the barbarous tendencies of the world "has been reversed." Destiny itself has set in against Popery. It must descend into the abyss of the past, its appropriate grave. Its old follies, like the congenial ones of alchemy, astrology, witchcraft, scholastic metaphysics, cenobitic and anchoretic life, must inevitably disappear amidst the increasing light of the age, as bats and owls flee before the day. It may make temporary and spasmodic efforts at self-resuscitation, but it cannot succeed. The waves may dash forward upon the strand when the tide is descending; but as sure as the invincible laws of nature will they at last go down. Popery attempts to extend itself abroad-it has many foreign missions, and they at times seem to have the energy of life in them. But where do they succeed now as they did two, three and four hundred years ago?

We are all familiar, from our childhood, with a long-legged spider, which when pierced through the center, still struggles in its extremities—and the severed extremities themselves still for a time move with convulsive life; but at last die. Such is Popery.

We affirm, in the third place, that local evidence confirms these general views, Popery is rapidly declining in Ireland. The Catholic papers of that country that beautiful country, so long and foully degraded by Romanism-admit the fact, and express fears of the speedy overthrow of the Papal sway. And this is not owing merely to emigration, but very largely to evangelical conversions. Thousands after thousands of Roman Catholics have there been added to the ranks of Protestantism within ten years. The late census of England, like that of

A similar declension has taken place in the British colonies. Mackenzie's Weekly Messenger says, that in 1820 the population of the Canadas may have been 520,000, of whom perhaps 380,000 were Papists, and only 140,000 Protestants-exhibiting nineteen to seven of the whole country as in favor of the Popish Church. In 1853, the population may be assumed to number 2,000,000, of whom 940,000 belong to the Popish religion, and 1,060,000 to the Protestant-showing nearly eleven Protestants to every nine Papists; the latter having gained 560,000 in thirty years, the former 920,000. It is unduly preponderating, however, in England, in one respect. According to a report of parliament published in the Catholic Tablet, of London, February 25, 1852, out of, a population of 21,000,000 in England and Scotland, whereof the Roman Church claimed 1,000,000, she supplied the prisons with three candidates to one of all other Churches. The wretched neglect of the education of its poor is acknowledged, even by its own friends; they say, in a late number of the same paper, "In London there are 22,000 Catholic children, of whom only about 4,000 are receiving Catholic education. The greater part of the remaining number are left to pass their tender years in the novitiate of a London street. There is no proportion between the wants of our poor and our provision for them-between our wealth and the education we can give. We are put to shame by every other body; and yet we are the salt of the earth!" Salt of the earth! How ironical the phrase sounds along with such admissions.

All this reasoning bears on the question with which we started. Popery, smitten with this inherent decay everywhere, cannot become formidable here. Dying out elsewhere because of its incompatibility with the practical energies and increasing lights of the age, how can it hold up its head here, where the characteristics of the age are all most rife? It does not succeed here. Its bishops and papers complain incessantly that the children of the Church are, to a great extent, lost. Even the