"Small things," wrote Dudley to the Countess of Lincoln in the first months of the Massachusetts settlement--"small things in the beginning of natural or politic bodies are as remarkable as greater in bodies full grown." The obscure events we have recited above are capital because they had a deciding influence on the fate of the Pilgrim settlement. It is not within our purpose to tell over again the pathetic story of that brave departure of the younger and stronger of the Pilgrims from Leyden to make the first break into the wilderness, but courage and devotion to an idea are not common; courage and devotion that bring at last important results are so rare that the student of history, however little disposed to indulge sentiment, turns in spite of himself to that last all-night meeting in Pastor Robinson's large house in the Belfry Lane at Leyden. "So," says Bradford, as if penning a new holy scripture, "they lefte that goodly and pleasante citie, which had been ther resting place near 12 years; but they knew they were pilgrimes and looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest cuntrie and quieted their spirits." Nor is it easy to pass over the solemn parting on the quay at Delft Haven, where, as the time of the tide forced the final tearful separation, while even the Dutch spectators wept in sympathy, the voice of the beloved Robinson in a final prayer was heard and the whole company fell upon their knees together for the last time. [Sidenote: Robinson's influence.] [Sidenote: Winslow's Briefe Narration, Young, 397.] [Sidenote: Note 6.] These things hardly pertain, perhaps, to a history of life such as this. It is with the influences that are to mold the new life while it is plastic that we are concerned. Chief of these is Robinson himself, a Moses who was never to see, even from a mountain top, the Canaan to which he had now led his people. He must stay behind with the larger half of the church. Rising to the occasion, his last words to this little company are worthy his magnanimous soul. He eloquently charged them "before God and his blessed angels to follow him no further than he followed Christ." ... He was confident "the Lord had more truth and light to break forth out of his holy word." In whatever sense we take them these were marvelous words in the seventeenth century. Robinson understood the progressive nature of truth as apprehended by the human mind in a way that makes him seem singularly modern. In the same address he declared it "not possible that ... full perfection of knowledge should break forth at once." He bade them not to affect separation from the Puritans in the Church of England, but "rather to study union than division."