The colonists of Massachusetts had no such blind prejudice against the Canon Law, or the Church of England, or the Church of Rome, as prevented them from adopting whatever they found therein which their consciences and their reason approved. So far from cherishing an unreasoning prejudice against the Ecclesiastical Courts, the people of Massachusetts have preserved, in their Probate Courts, substantially the same system of law and substantially the same method of procedure which were followed in the Consistory Court of London, and in the Consistory Court of Rome; notwithstanding that system came to them associated with the name of one of the most unpopular and yet one of the ablest of their governors--Sir Edmund Andros. There were, indeed, two complaints which the Puritans of Old England and of New England often made against the English Ecclesiastical Courts: first, that they punished with merciless severity violations of certain ecclesiastical regulations which involved no moral turpitude; second, that they were too lax in the punishment of social sins, Sabbath desecrations, etc., etc. But nowhere among the literary remains of the Puritans do we find any suggestion that the system of morals which was recognized by the Canon Law and administered by the Ecclesiastical Courts was "not suited to their opinions or condition." We shall not be understood as saying that the Canon Law in its entirety was ever adopted in New England, or even in Old England; it was not. When Henry VIII. assumed the prerogatives of supreme head of the Church of England, so much of the Canon Law as relates to the jurisdiction of the Pope was abrogated in that kingdom. So when the colonists of Massachusetts established "a Church without a bishop and a State without a king," so much of the Canon Law as relates to diocesan episcopacy also fell into what President Cleveland would call "innocuous desuetude." But they adopted the decalogue of Moses with as much reverence as did their fathers before them. They knew as well as the poet Lowell that "The Ten Commandments will not budge," but that, vitalized by the life of Christ, those commandments stand "the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." DORRIS'S HERO. A ROMANCE OF THE OLDEN TIME. BY MARJORIE DAW. "Spin, spin, Clotho, spin," hummed a gay, masculine voice. "Methinks, fair Mistress Dorris, even the Fates themselves could not be more devoted to their task than are you to that busy little wheel." Pretty Dorris Gordon glanced up from her seat by the long window opening into the cool, grassy orchard, where the sun played hide-and-seek with the shadows and then came back to rest _caressingly_ on her bent head crowned with its own sunshine of chestnut hair, but she stayed neither busy hand nor foot as she answered,--