He was about 32 years of age when he reached our shores; a period of life, when the energy of youth remains without its rashness, and the mind has acquired steadiness, without the timid caution and fixed pertinacity of old age. It is a period, however, when the character of most men is already formed. Though new situations and difficult exigencies may develope unexpected powers, and give prominence to certain traits of character, yet the mind commonly remains unchanged in its essential qualities. It was long since said by Horace, that those who cross the ocean pass under a new sky, but do not acquire a new disposition.[4] This was probably true of Mr. Williams; and if we could trace his early history, we should undoubtedly see an exhibition of the same principles and temper which distinguished his subsequent career. It may, however, be said of most of the prominent men among the first settlers of New England, that their history begins at the period of their arrival here. Our accounts of their early lives are very brief. They were too busy to record their own early fortunes, and too pious to feel any pride in displaying their descent, their virtues, or their sufferings. The present and the future filled their minds; and they seem to have felt, that the wide ocean which separated them from the land of their fathers had effected a similar disjunction of their history. Of Roger Williams less is known than of some others, because no efforts were made by early biographers to collect facts concerning him. His opponents were more disposed to obliterate his name, than to record his life. His contemporary friends were sharers in his sufferings, and were not at leisure to relate his story or their own. Even the records of the church which he founded at Providence contain no notice of him, written earlier than 1775, when the Rev. John Stanford, a venerable minister, still living in New-York, collected the fugitive traditions concerning the origin of the church.