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THE TRANSIT OF CIVILIZATION
FROM ENGLAND TO AMERICA IN
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

BY

EDWARD EGGLESTON

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To Frances My Wife

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PREFACE.

In seeking to give a history of the civilization of the seventeenth century there was little help in anything American, and, to my surprise, I found long ago that I could not count on anything English. There were many books on Shakespeare, more or less good when they were not bad, and there was Masson’s ponderous Life and Times of John Milton in six octavo volumes. These afforded something, but the civilization of the century was not told in any of them. It became necessary to build a description from the ground. The complex states of knowing and thinking, of feeling and passion, must be explained. The little world as seen by the man of the seventeenth century must be understood. Its sun, moon, and planets were flames of fire without gravity, revolved about the earth by countless angels; its God governed this one little world with mock majesty. Its heaven, its horrible hell of material fire blown by the mouth of God, its chained demons whose fetters might be loosed, its damnation of infants were to be appreciated and expounded. The inhumanity of punishments and of sport in that day, the mixture made of religion and revenge—these and a hundred other things went to make up the traits of the century. To explain the things in this other age in which I found myself it was necessary to go to England. To understand England one must understand the Continent; to make this out one must often thread his way to antiquity. The use of Latin by nearly all scholars made the world’s knowledge more

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or less common to all. My little corner widened out into a part of all human history.

Eclipses, parhelia, comets, were danger signals hung out in the heavens as warnings. Logic was the only implement for the discovery of truth. Observation was in its birth throes. Medicines were recognized by signaturism; on this slender basis what a towering structure was built! Right and wrong were thought of only as the result of direct revelation; they had not yet found standing room in the great theater of natural knowledge. Until we understand these things we write the history of the seventeenth century in vain. It is the last age which sought knowledge of physical things by deduction. The next century brought philosophy and philosophy dawned into science.

We must apply to the seventeenth century the severe canons of history; people with ancestors will be disappointed. We can not make out in the seventeenth century the great destiny of Virginia in the eighteenth. We must not be sure that the future greatness of later New England is wrapped up in the peculiarly narrow and forbidding husk of the later seventeenth century. Nor can commercial greatness be predicted of New York; nor did Pennsylvania show signs of the great industries developed from her coal fields. The causes of greatness are not always traceable. Where least looked for may develop the next group of statesmen and authors, of inventors and great merchants. We may write history, but we may not prophesy.

Joshua’s Rock, Lake George, November, 1900.

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CONTENTS.

CHAPTER THE FIRST.
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Mental Outfit of the Early Colonists	1
CHAPTER THE SECOND.
Digression Concerning Medical Notions at the Period of Settlement	48
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
Mother English, Folk-Speech, Folk-Lore, and Literature	96
CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
Weights and Measures of Conduct.	141
CHAPTER THE FIFTH.
The Tradition of Education	207
CHAPTER THE SIXTH.
Land and Labor in the Early Colonies	273

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