the solemn mockery was proceeding, Wenlock Churtson, who had been previously banished on pain of death, suddenly entered the court, and confronted the dismayed and astonished judges! Where, with such men to deal with, was this butchering work to end? Leddron was offered his life, if he would promise to leave the colony and not return. He refused to compromise, or barter away, even for life, his right as an English citizen, and was hanged!

Leddron was the last Quaker victim. The hideous doings of the court had become too monstrous-the contrast between such frightful tyranny and their own high-sounding professions-their glowing apostrophes to freedom! liberty! too glaring to be longer even partially concealed beneath the gloss of a vain and exaggerated nationality, and the whole murderous enginery fell to pieces amidst the soul-felt rejoicing of every genuine and enlightened Puritan in the colony! Let us add, upon an authority which cannot be gainsaid— that of Roger Williams-that the great majority of those merciless magistrates were, in all the private, and with the exception only of their intolerance, public relations of life, the best, kindest, most excellent of men. 'I know you mean well,' Williams would frequently say. I am sure you are earnest, sincere, naturally kindhearted and godly men; that you verily believe you are serving God, whilst doing the work of the devil. And this is why I chiefly tremble for you: the measure and fervency of your zeal will be that of your cruelty and rage.'

The repetition of the high-minded founder of the state of Rhode Island's name, reminds us that we have not yet stated that Roger Williams proceeded to England in 1643; and, backed by the influence of Sir Harry Vane, readily obtained an independent charter for Rhode Island, with which he returned in triumph to Americain real triumph, for the ship in which he came back had not anchored, when a perfect fleet of boats, crowded with New England citizens, put off to welcome him-another proof, if any were wanting, of the sympathy of the great body of the colonists, dominated by habit and clerical influence as they to a great extent were, with the benign, tolerant, Christian principles of which he was the fearless and eloquent expounder and champion. The constitution of Rhode Island, many years afterwards confirmed by Charles II., was a democracy, with this one proviso, that in matters of conscience the majority should have no power to legislate for the minority. Roger Williams was still a banished man; but armed with the letters of which he was the bearer from the Long Parliament, he had nothing to dread, as he passed through the streets receiving and reciprocating the congratulations of the citizens of Boston! It was in this year that Miantonimoh was delivered up to the tender mercies of Uncas. We have no inclination, nor is there any need, to dwell upon the witch-destroying propensity of the Pilgrim Puritans-a cruel and absurd mania they carried with them from Europe, in many parts of

which it flourished long after it had died out in New England. We will only quote the lamentation of the last witch-judge, as recorded by Increase Mather-a bitter foe to witches-over the commonsense-compelled cessation of the tragedies that had been enacted in Salem and other towns in New England. It reminds one very forcibly of the predictions indulged in by a famous English chancellor that England's sun would infallibly set on the day that her parliament should decide on doing justice and loving mercy. The last court for the trial of witches sat at Charlestown, February 17, 1693. The judge said: "That who it was obstructed the execution of justice, or hindered those good proceedings, he knew not, but thereby the kingdom of Satan was advanced, and the Lord have mercy upon the country!" Increase Mather does not give the name of this indignant justice; but the important part of the business, that all the witches in custody were discharged, and no more prosecutions permitted, is duly and circumstantially set forth in his History of New England Witchcraft, compiled at the request of the New England divines.

The material progress of the colony meanwhile was unprecedented -marvellous. New England had attained a giant growth; whilst other settlements on the same continent, with much greater advantages as to climate, soil, and previous organisation, were still in a condition of doubtful vitality. The Puritan emigration amounted from first to last, according to Mr Bancroft, the historian of the United States, to 21,200 individuals, who, says the same authority, by the time the Long Parliament met in England, when the movement, as a peculiar and distinctive one, may be said to have ceased, had marked out and commenced fifty towns and thirty villages, built between thirty and forty chapels, begun to export furs and timber, carried grain and cured fish to the West Indies, and in 1643, had ships upon the stocks of 400 tons burden! The youth and manhood of New England have, it is well known, amply realised the dazzling promise of its infancy. It was chiefly with reference to the astounding commercial enterprise of this state, that Mr Burke and others in the British House of Commons in 1775, uplifted their hands with astonishment, exclaiming: 'What in the world was ever equal to it!' It was in Boston the flame burst forth which, kindling the rifle-flashes of Bunker's Hill, taught the astounded ministers of George III., that the old spirit which had vindicated English liberties at Marston Moor and Naseby-and in so doing, prepared the way for the yet far-off constitutional and beneficent monarchy under which the people of these islands have now the happiness to live-glowed as brightly as ever in the hearts of Englishmen, wherever upon the earth's wide surface they might chance to have been born! New England, too, was the first state in America, in the world, to declare the slave-trade piracy-capital felony; and her free schools, set on foot in the early days of the colony, were the type

and precursors of the public educational establishments throughout the Union. Neither can there be any question, that although the Virginian city of Washington is the governmental, and New York the commercial capital of the republic, New England is its intellectual metropolis. Above all, the soul and centre of the great moral agitation which in recent years has pulled down the huge enormity that, like the hideous intolerance whose doings we have faintly recited-and inherited, let us never forget to acknowledge, from the same source as that-mocked by revolting contrast the liberty with which it was associated, as well as drowned in its chainclankings and muttered slave-curses the triumphal hymns to freedom and the natural rights of humanity that resounded throughout the vast, and, in so many aspects, glorious republic of the West.

A

T the eastern boundary of Paris, on the way towards the cemetery of Père-la-Chaise, we have occasion to cross an open space, on which once stood the famous prisonfortress, the Bastille. The name of Bastille or Bastel was, in ancient times, given to any kind of erection calculated to withstand a military force; and thus, formerly in England and on the borders of Scotland, the term Bastel-house was usually applied to places of strength and fancied security. Of the many Bastilles in France, that at Paris, whose history we propose to narrate, and which at first was called the Bastille St-Antoine, from being erected near the suburb of St-Antoine, retained the name longest. This fortress, of melancholy celebrity, was erected under the following circumstances.

In the year 1356, when the English, then at war with France, were in the neighbourhood of Paris, it was considered necessary by the inhabitants of the French capital to repair the bulwarks of their city. Stephen Marcel, provost of the merchants, undertook this task, and amongst other defences, added to the fortifications at the eastern entrance to the town a gate flanked with a tower on each side. The popularity which the provost acquired by this measure, and others equally judicious, was for some time considerable; but his secret connection with the king of Navarre, who laid pretensions to the French throne, proved his ruin. On the 31st of July 1358, he attempted to introduce that prince into Paris through the gate of

No. 132.

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the Bastille, but his intention having transpired, he could not succeed in having it opened. His enemies, who were alike fierce and numerous, soon reached the spot, and surrounded him. The provost, holding the keys in his hand, strove to defend himself from his assailants, and, ascending the entrance-ladder, endeavoured to take refuge in one of the towers; but a man named De Charny having struck him on the head with his axe, he fell, and was despatched by the infuriated crowd at the foot of that Bastille which he had himself caused to be erected.

Hugh Aubriot, the next who, after Stephen Marcel, added to the constructions of the Bastille, proved scarcely more fortunate. He was provost of Paris under Charles V., king of France, who, not thinking the walls of the Bastille sufficiently strong and high, and wishing to complete them, charged him to superintend the necessary extensions. In the year 1369, Aubriot accordingly added two towers, which, being placed opposite to those already existing on each side of the gate, made of the Bastille a square fort, with a tower at each of the four angles. Notwithstanding his great talents and integrity, or rather on account of these very qualities, Aubriot had acquired many enemies, by whom, on the death of Charles V., he was bitterly persecuted. Although, owing to the influence of his friends at court, his life was spared, he was condemned to perpetual confinement, and placed in the Bastille, of which, according to some historians, he was the first prisoner. After some time, he was thence conveyed to Fort l'Evêque, another prison, where he remained forgotten until 1381. The Maillotins, a band of insurgents, so named from the leaden mallets with which they were armed, then delivered him, to place him at their head; but though he seemingly joined in their plans, Aubriot escaped from them the same night, and safely reached Burgundy, his native province, where he died within the space of a year.

After the insurrection of the Maillotins in 1382, the young king, Charles VI., still further enlarged the Bastille by adding four towers to it, thus giving it, instead of the square form it formerly possessed, the shape of an oblong or parallelogram. The fortress now consisted of eight towers, each a hundred feet high, and, like the wall which united them, nine feet thick. Four of those towers looked on the city, and four on the suburb of St-Antoine. To increase its strength, the Bastille was surrounded by a ditch twenty-five feet deep, and a hundred and twenty feet wide. The road which formerly passed through it was turned on one side, the old gate blocked up, and a new one, which retained the name of its predecessor, erected on the left of the fortress. The Bastille was now completed (1383), and though additions were subsequently made to it, the body of the fortress underwent no important change.

Each of the eight towers which composed the Bastille bore a different name. One of the two which had been erected by Stephen