causes, which has worked out these remarkable results. Here was a people living under all the impulse and play of freedom, even though nominally in subjection to a foreign power. It is one of the sublimest testimonies to the value of freedom, and to universal education at the same time. It shows what the millions in this land may yet do, and may by-and-by become, if they can only be fairly and honestly put under such a training.

There have been some stirring scenes in Connecticut history, in connection with this matter of their charter, and right of self-government. It was in the year 1687, that Sir Edmund Andros, having a few months before arrived from England, and landed in Boston, at length made ready to go with a royal commission to Connecticut, and demand, in the name of the king, that its charter should be given up. Attended by several members of his council, and other distinguished gentlemen, (probably of Boston), and with a body-guard of sixty soldiers, he entered Hartford in state. A meeting was called, in which Gov. Treat, and other officers of the colonial government, and many of the chief citizens, were present. Andros demanded the charter, and set forth his reasons at length. Gov. Treat replied. The meeting was prolonged late into the night. At length there was an appearance of yielding. The charter was brought in, and laid upon the table, as if to be surrendered. Hollister, in his History of Connecticut, pictures the scene graphically.* "It was then that the first lesson was given to a creature of the British crown, teaching him how wide is the difference between an English populace and a body of American freemen. In an instant the lights were extinguished and the room was wrapped in total darkness. Still not a word was spoken, not a threat was breathed. The silence that pervaded the place was profound as the darkness. The candles were quietly relighted, but, strange to tell, the charter had disappeared."

It is safe to say of Andros, what Coleridge says of his Ancient Mariner:

Vol. I., p. 315.

"He went like one that hath been stunn'd,

And is of sense forlorn,

A sadder and a wiser man

He rose the morrow morn."

For almost a hundred years after this, the Connecticut people were left alone, to enjoy their liberties, so that when the revolutionary war broke out, there they stood, with their own chosen governor, Jonathan Trumbull, ready to do battle in earnest for the cause of liberty, which the rest of the States had need of far more than themselves. The Governors of other States were creatures of the crown (except perhaps in Rhode Island), but the Connecticut Governor was Washington's "Brother Jonathan," all through the war.

A little while ago a Congregational minister, who had been born we believe in Massachusetts-certainly had been settled in the ministry there,-removed to Connecticut and is now the pastor of a church in the State. Meeting him soon after his removal, we asked him how he liked the Connecticut people. "They are curious folks," said he, "every man seems to stand on his own foundation, and be able to do his thinking for himself." In our apprehension he hit the case exactly. From the causes already named, there is no State where there is so much of what we may call an hereditary individuality. We freely confess that this element is somewhat in excess, so far as the most genial and pleasant state of society is concerned. There is a better and healthier public spirit in Massachusetts than in Connecticut. But when it comes to the raising up of men, who are able to stand alone, and to strike out boldly for their objects, there is no population on this continent like it!

And now we have defended our thesis, and we leave the decision of the case to our readers.

But we submit, that if the managers of the "Atlantic Monthly" had had a wider knowledge of men and things-if they had been more up to the mark, for their business-they would not have allowed an Article that had about it so many infelici.

ties, and so little of the comme il faut, to have appeared in their pages.

We wait yet in faith, notwithstanding all the disappointments of the past, for a great American Magazine. The sun never looked upon a land in which literary culture so abounds as in this, and we wait for some prophet's hand to strike the rock, that the waters may flow forth abundantly.

And as we close this Article, and in view of this survey, we think it fair to ask the question, whether Massachusetts has any just occasion for that self-complacency with which in these latter days she is accustomed to regard herself. In Congress, and out of Congress, she stands somewhat in the attitude of Joseph in the midst of his brethren; and, without the divine warrant which he had, is virtually saying to all around her"For behold we were binding sheaves in the field, and lo, my sheaf arose and stood upright; and behold your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf." Neither for her revolutionary services-for the talent which she has furnished to the chief councils of the nation-for the men raised up for noble and intellectual work in every part of the country-for the general prevalence of literary culture among her people for the power to originate and carry forward enterprises looking to the well being of the wide land-for none of these things has she any occasion to give herself airs, or claim preeminence over the neighboring State of Connecticut. We have often wished that a little of that conceit which centers about the city of Boston might be abated. Proud as she may well be of her position, we think she would stand in a more grand and noble attitude, if she had a juster conception of what has been and is going on intellectually elsewhere, and from what sources she herself derives no small share of her strength.

ARTICLE VIII-THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS.

The Hawaiian Islands: their Progress and Condition under Missionary Labors. By RUFUS ANDERSON, D. D., Foreign Secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. With Illustrations. Second Edition. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 1864.

THE Hawaiian people are the youngest-born of nations, and the first-born of modern Christian missions. If for no other reason they should receive the attention of the civilized world. The youngest, the smallest, and weakest of all recognized nationalities, they have entered the community of nations, to impart as well as to receive; and from present appearances they are destined to act by no means the least considerable part in coming history. Their geographical position insures their growing importance in the commerce of the Pacific. If a line be drawn from the terminus of the Panama Railroad to Canton, it will be bisected by this group of Islands; and although nearer to San Francisco than to any other great port, and by reason of this proximity more vitally connected with our country than any other, their central position makes them important to the whole commercial world, and will probably keep them neutral territory between all nations;-a radius from Honolulu would sweep a circle through Central America, the Russian dominions, Japan, and Australia. These considerations sufficiently determine the material value of these Islands. But the moral relations we bear to the Islanders are for us the chief bond of interest; and will be forever. They have not had many fathers, as Paul said to the Corinthians, but we of the Church of God in America have begotten them. The race owes its existence, to-day, to the parental nurture and protection of our missionaries; and what is more, their Christianization, and nationalization,-for we must have a new word, where we have a new thing. No history is better known to American Christians, and none dearer. From the time when Obookiah was found sitting on the steps of one of the College buildings in New Haven, weeping

spot

that the treasures of knowledge were open to others, but not to him; and one bearing the name of Dwight found him, and brought him savingly to Christ; from the time when a company of our sons and daughters, a select and consecrated band of missionaries, left our communion and our shores, until this romantic yet sober, and Christian history has ultimated in the severing of the tie which bound the Hawaiian people to usand the mission-field has become a Christian country-home missions have supplanted foreign missions-and the dark has become a radiating center from which the newly evangelized-missionaries have gone to preach the Gospel to the Micronesian "regions beyond:" from first to last, the Sandwich Islands mission has been the theme of prayer and praise in our Christian assemblies, and from the modern apostleship has grown up a love as truly apostolic, and we have said with the great Apostle to the Gentiles, "ye are in our hearts to die and live with you." The generation that are now in the midst of life's intensest activities obtained their earliest and most sacred inspirations from the ventures, trials, and successes of this mission; and among the generation, now going off the stage, are the men and the women who made these sacrifices, and won this victory. After all this, and with the world-wide notoriety of all this, will it be believed that the claims of American Christians to these Islands are called in question, their right disputed to the confidence and affections of these children of their spiritual loins, and even the whole work of God in those Islands, in connection with our missions, called a failure? And by whom? We could bear it, as we have borne it, at the hands of men, who leaving civilized life for the license and obscurity of savage life, opposed and vilified the missionaries because missionary influence interfered with their traffic and their pleasures. Such opposition, in all ages, has been an unwilling witness to the church of God. We could bear it, as we have borne it, from men, bearing even the Christian name, but belonging to the Roman Church, from which Protestants have no recognition to expect, and to whose missions in turn they give none. But that men bearing the name of Englishmen, and professing allegiance to the English Church, although,