Here is, indeed, a soldier prisoner on parole in a
drab coat, with no hope of exchange, but with a heart beating time to
the tap of the drum. Mr. Whittier is, on the whole, the most American of
our poets, and there is a fire of warlike patriotism in him that burns
all the more intensely that it is smothered by his creed. But it is not
as a singular antithesis of dogma and character that this peculiarity of
his is interesting to us. The fact has more significance as illustrating
how deep an impress the fathers of New England stamped upon the
commonwealth they founded. Here is a descendant and member of the sect
they chiefly persecuted, more deeply imbued with the spirit of the
Puritans than even their own lineal representatives. The New Englander
is too strong for the sectarian, and the hereditary animosity softens to
reverence, as the sincere man, looking back, conjures up the image of a
sincerity as pure, though more stern, than his own. And yet the poetic
sentiment of Whittier misleads him as far in admiration, as the pitiful
snobbery of certain renegades perverts them to depreciation, of the
Puritans. It is not in any sense true that these pious and earnest men
brought with them to the New World the deliberate forethought of the
democracy which was to develop itself from their institutions. They
brought over its seed, but unconsciously, and it was the kindly nature
of the soil and climate that was to give it the chance to propagate and
disperse itself.
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