degrees of awful rank behind, while still the faculty and necessity of reverence was strong in him — bestowed it on the white hair and venerable brow of age — on long-tried integrity — on solid wisdom and sad-coloured experience — on endowments of that grave and weighty order which gave the idea of permanence, and comes under the general definition of respectability.

These primitive statesmen, therefore — Bradstreet, Endicott, Dudley, Bellingham, and their compeers — who were elevated to power by the early choice of the people, seem to have been not often brilliant, but distinguished by a ponderous sobriety, rather than activity of intellect. They had fortitude and self-reliance, and in time of difficulty or peril stood up for the welfare of the state like a line of cliffs against a