Then came answering voices from the Colonies. Rev. William Morrell, of the Established Church, a settler of 1623, said of New England, in a Latin poem translated by himself:-- “_A grandchild to Earth’s paradise is born_, Well-limbed, well-nerved, fair, rich, sweet, yet forlorn.”[263] “The Simple Cobbler of Agawam,” another name for Rev. Nathaniel Ward, of Ipswich, Mass., at the close of his witty book, first published in 1647, and having four different editions in this single year, sends an invitation to those at home:-- “So farewell, England Old! If evil times ensue, Let good men come to us, We’ll welcome them to New.” Another witness we meet in the writings of Franklin. It is George Webb, who, decamping from Oxford and the temptations of scholarship, indented himself according to the usage of the times, and became what Franklin calls “a bought servant” on our shores, where his genius flowered in the prophetic couplet, written in 1727:-- “Europe shall mourn her ancient fame declined, _And Philadelphia be the Athens of mankind_.”[264] Another, Gulian Verplanck, of New York, in verses written in England in 1773, foretells the repetition of British wealth, power, and glory in the New World:-- “In other worlds another Britain see, And what thou art America shall be.”[265] And yet another, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, born in Scotland, and a graduate of our Princeton College in 1771, in a Commencement poem on “The Rising Glory of America,” pictured the future of the continent, adopting as a motto the verses of Seneca twice quoted by Columbus:-- “This is thy praise, America, thy power, Thou best of climes by Science visited, By Freedom blest, and richly stored with all The luxuries of life! Hail, happy land, The seat of empire, the abode of kings, The final stage where Time shall introduce Renownèd characters, and glorious works Of high invention and of wondrous art, Which not the ravages of Time shall waste, Till he himself has run his long career!”[266] To these add Voltaire, who, in his easy verse, written in 1751, represents God as putting fever in European climates, “and the remedy in America.”[267] From this chorus, with only one discordant voice, I pass to a long line of voices so distinct and full as to be recognized separately. JOHN MILTON, 1641. The list opens with John Milton, whose lofty words are like an overture to the great drama of emigration, with its multitudes in successive generations. If not a prophet, he has yet struck a mighty key-note in our history. The author of “Paradise Lost,” of “Comus,” and the heroic Sonnets, needs no special mention beyond the two great dates of birth and death. He was born 9th December, 1608, and died 8th November, 1674. The treatise from which I quote was written in 1641.