In spite of popular philippics her traits do not change much from the summary of them made fifty years ago, "Impatience with wrong, quarrel with precedent, love of education, and faith in God." Ah! now we touch the true characteristics of New England, lying in the deep ocean of her history, unmoved by the lighter traits sparkling upon the surface. That is a true boast of Jonathan to John:-- "We aint so weak and poor, John, With twenty million people, And close to every door, John, A school-house and a steeple." And this is but the outgrowth of that short formula of the brave founders of school and church: "Faith in God, faith in man, faith in work;" so that New England's present traits are directly traceable to Puritan influence. Our educational institutions had substantial foundation-stones of self-sacrifice and far-seeing purpose, nobly laid by that score of sturdy men, dedicating, for the first academy, a peck of corn, or a shilling in cash, or a few treasured volumes. The Sabbath has been called the "poem of New England," and it is that always, whether rung out by the city's chiming bells or whispered in the sacred repose of the country church. But it was never so truly a poem as on that first New England Sabbath, when the church was a weather-beaten ship, its support the lashing waves, and the worshippers "a handful of sad, stern men and women kneeling in their spray-stiffened garments to thank God for freedom to worship him." New England's best traits, then, are but her rightful inheritance; traits "lineally descended" from her founders, softened and purified in the transmitting many times, as in the case of their sectional loyalty. "They seemed to shrink from trying to get to heaven by any other road than that which their fathers travelled, lest they should miss them at their journey's end." And in these days, thank God! religious toleration is creeping over the forbidding rock of New England theology, much as the delicate vines of the May-flower crept over and beautified the hard, unyielding soil. Thus New England stands, in her freedom, love of education, and all those homely domestic traits which make her the comfortable, clever, strong, and tender mother she is, while under and through and over all her traits runs, like a strain of restful music, her great, all powerful, far-reaching faith. EDITOR'S TABLE.