The narrow bigotries of the times, showing themselves under different aspects, sprang naturally out of the various soils in which the seeds had taken root. The early colonists of New England, escaping like the Jews from Egyptian bondage, and lit by flaming torches and cloudy providences to their promised land, compelled every one, Canaanite and Quaker, independent Philistine and non-conforming Episcopalian, to bring offerings to their cherished altar, under pain of banishment to the wilderness beyond. Those of Virginia, on the contrary, bringing with them their own lares and penates from their father’s house, and fearing the introduction of strange deities, fenced in the sacred images with sharp picket-palings set by legal enactment. Over both, however, the new Evangel of toleration began to break, and voices of those “crying in the wilderness,” divinely sent, cleaving with gentle strokes the consciences of thoughtful men, and heard around the altar and inside the guarded pickets, heralded the coming Emanuel. We have said that, up to the time of the accession of James II. in 1685, the fruits of civil liberty were gradually maturing in the growing settlements. Immediately after that event, however, a chilling black frost fell upon them, rolling up the green leaves of the charters and threatening to kill outright all the chance-sown trees, as well as the more promising cultivated grafts. During the three and a half years that this blight continued, the greater part of the popular governments were stunted or destroyed. The Connecticut rocking horse, conjured from King Charles II. by Winthrop’s ring, was hid away in a hollow oak at Hartford. Sir Edmund Andros, a man of narrow spirit and keen temper, was sent out with instructions so large that he swallowed up the governments of all the New England Colonies and New York. A severe fit of indigestion followed, acidulating and fermenting, taking away the general appetite, and causing painful memories of the time when there were no heart-burnings and dangerous blood-rushings headward. And so, when in 1688 the Revolution brought in the Orange Prince, health bloomed again on the colonial cheek, and the constitution seemed to acquire a more vigorous tone than ever.