A generation was coming forward which remembered nothing of what Englishmen had suffered in New England for want of the necessaries and comforts of life. The occupations of industry were various and remunerative. Land was cheap, and the culture of it yielded no penurious reward to the husbandman; while he who chose to sell his labor was at least at liberty to place his own estimate upon it, and found it always in demand. The woods and waters were lavish of gifts which were to be had simply for the taking. The white wings of commerce, in their long flight to and from the settler's home, wafted the commodities which afford enjoyment and wealth to both sender and receiver. The numerous handicrafts, which in its constantly increasing division of labor, a thriving society employs, found liberal recompense; and manufactures on a larger scale were beginning to invite accumulations of capital and associated labor. The Confederacy of the Four Colonies was an humble, but a substantial, power in the world. It was known to be such by its French, Dutch, and savage neighbors; by the alienated communities on Narragansett Bay; and by the rulers of the mother country. During Winthrop's last ten years, nowhere else in the world had Englishmen been so happy as under the generous government which his mind inspired and regulated. What one mind could do for a community's well-being, his had done. The prosecution of the issues he had wrought for was now to be committed to the wisdom and courage of a younger generation, and to the course of events, under the continued guidance of a propitious Providence. CHAPTER II. ESSAYISTS, MORALISTS, AND REFORMERS. =_Joseph Dennie, 1768-1812._= (Manual, p. 497.) From "The Lay Preacher." =_150._= REFLECTION'S ON THE SEASONS. "Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun." The sensitive Gray, in a frank letter to his friend West, assures him that, when the sun grows warm enough to tempt him from the fireside, he will, like all other things, be the better for his influence; for the sun is an old friend, and an excellent nurse, &c. This is an opinion which will be easily entertained by every one who has been cramped by the icy hand of Winter, and who feels the gay and renovating influence of Spring. In those mournful months when vegetables and animals are alike coerced by cold, man is tributary to the howling storm and the sullen sky, and is, in the phrase of Johnson, a "slave to gloom;" but when the earth is disencumbered of her load of snows, and warmth is felt, and twittering swallows are heard, he is again jocund and free. Nature renews her charter to her sons.... Hence is enjoyed, in the highest luxury,-- "Day, and the sweet approach of even and morn, And sight of vernal bloom and summer's rose, And flocks, and herds, and human face divine."