Lying under cold snow-white sheets, with jealous neighbors, the French settlers of Canada and Acadia, ready to put pins in the youngster and keep her crying, and if possible to stunt her growth, Maine was longest in her cradle of any of the infant settlements. As early as 1602 some Frenchmen landed on her coast, but only remained long enough to make a few eyelet-holes in that watery frill which the busy but chill fingers of the Atlantic has wrought upon her eastern hem. It was reserved for the sturdier Saxon race to take the infant in hand, and, by hardier treatment, to bring her up to robuster strength. The first serious effort was made in 1622. That court pet, Gorges, obtained, in 1639, a charter, which not only covered the present State, but lapped over into the borders of Massachusetts. The latter resented this interference with her own by making counter-claims, and in 1652 insisted upon taking the child under its exclusive protection. The contest, carried into the English courts, outlived of course its original promoters, but was at last, in 1677, terminated, to the astonishment of the suitors and the disgust of the lawyers. The custody of the infant, now grown to be a stripling, was awarded to Massachusetts, which, always looking after the Maine chance, got a most obstreperous minor in charge. In 1630 a band of eight hundred and forty bodies and souls, led by John Winthrop, and tempted by a spring of good water, settled on the peninsula of Shawmut, and began Boston, which, we are glad to say, is not finished yet. May it never be; but, ever growing, may it carry on wagon-making as successfully as in former days, furnishing hubs for those covered transportation carts which trundle westward, and which, if allowed to stand still over night, swarm into a new colony the next morning. The following year a miniature church and state experiment was made in the Massachusetts settlement, by limiting the eligibility to civil office to church-members, whether civil or not.