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hundred thousand Protestants from France, the desired invasion
of William and Mary in 1689, and the settlement of the House
of Hanover in 1714, each brought from the continent an infusion
upon the original stock, the aggregate of which may not
have been less than five or six per cent. of that into which it
was ingrafted. Yet hardly more than three in a thousand, for
instance, of Scottish ancestry, almost wholly the migration of
the heroic defenders of Londonderry, that came, as one hundred
and twenty families, in 1718 and 19, could be found in 1775
among dwellers on our soil; a smaller number of the glorious
Huguenot exiles above thirty years longer had been resident
here, and may have been happy enough by natural increase
(though I doubt it) to equal the later band. If these be also
counted three in a thousand, much fewer, though earlier still,
must be the Dutch that crept in from New York, chiefly to
Connecticut, so that none can believe they reach two in a thousand,
while something less must be the ratio of Irish. Germany,
Italy, Sweden, Spain, Africa and all the rest of the
world, together, did not outnumber the Scotch, or the French
singly. A more homogeneous stock cannot be seen, I think, in
any so extensive a region, at any time, since that when the ark
of Noah discharged its passengers on Mount Arafat, except in
the few centuries elapsing before the confusion of Babel.
What honorable ancestry the body of New England population
may assert, has often been proclaimed in glowing language;
but the words of William Stoughton, in his Election sermon,
1668, express the sentiment with no less happiness than brevity:
"GOD SIFTED A WHOLE NATION THAT HE MIGHT SEND
CHOICE GRAIN INTO THE WILDERNESS."
By an instinct of our nature, we all love to learn the places
of our birth, and the chief circumstances in the lives of our
progenitors. More liberal than that is the sentiment by which
our curious spirit desires knowledge of the same concomitants
in the case of great benefactors of mankind; and the hope of
ascertaining to a reasonable extent the early history of John
Harvard was certainly one of the chief inducements of my visit
to England early in 1842. I would have gladly given five
hundred dollars to get five lines about him in any relation, private
or public. Favored as I was, in this wish, by the countenance
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