and ninety years. This fact alone is sufficiently indicative of the influence of its ministers. We cannot here go into the history of the Concord Indians, interesting as it is, but it is proper to remark, in the present connexion, that Concord was on their account, honored in due time with the presence of John Elliot, "that apostle, not a whit behind the chiefest apostles."

The influence of such individuals as these, must have been very considerable. It does not detract at all, however, from the credit due to the community at large. Just the reverse. It is one of the surest indications of both the good sense and the staunch principle of that community, that it selected such leaders, and that it suffered them to remain so long, and to move so efficiently. The same inference in its favor could be easily made from its attention to education, including a generous subscription, of several years' continuance, for the benefit of Harvard College. During a portion of the years 1775 and 1776, when the buildings at Cambridge were occupied as barracks by the army, Concord was selected as the seat of that Institution, and the accommodation which it there received seems to have corresponded with the most sanguine hopes of President Langdon and his learned Professors. The recitations during that period, were at the court-house and the meeting-house.

The proceedings of Concord, during the Indian troubles, in Philip's war, in the French war, but most of all in the Revolution, confirm, in the most satisfactory manner, the preceding remarks on its character. Mr. Shattuck quotes on his title-page the just eulogy of one of our most distinguished citizens, that "nobler records exist nowhere; nowhere can there be found higher proofs of a spirit that was ready to hazard all, to pledge all, to sacrifice all, in the cause of their country, than in the New England towns;" and we do no injustice to other places when we say of this, that the records of its patriotism, in the times that truly "tried men's souls," in all those times, will bear comparison with those of any community, be it large or be it small, which can be found, on the face of the earth. Were there no other reason for it, the history of such a place should be spared, with all the long roll of its services, and of its sacrifices, as a monument to every coming age, of the power of disinterested devotedness to principle, and of unwavering fidelity to men; of collectedness and self-control; of all the elements, in a word, of the

power of self-government which either stir or sleep in the character of every community, and in the bosom of every man born free, and fully determined to remain so. That history is worth writing, and worth reading.

We have no space left for the valuable estimate which we find here furnished, of the number of men supplied by Concord, for actual service in the war. Some notion may be formed of it, when we say, that it raised one hundred minute-men, and seventy-four soldiers, to serve at Cambridge, in the first year; that the next season, it raised one hundred and fortyfive, to serve at Dorchester heights, in March; that in June, when the Assembly, in the same spirit, resolved to raise five thousand militia for six months, for the continental service, it furnished sixty-seven more, and paid them besides, at an expense of over six hundred pounds; and that it went on in this way to the end of the war. It was continually supplying these men also with shoes, stockings, shirts, coats, blankets, and beef.* From October, 1780, to the following July, for example, it provided 42,779 pounds of beef for the army. It supplied moreover, at sundry periods, the families at home of those engaged in the service abroad. The taxes, of course, were enormous. Mr. Shattuck gives a table of those of the years 1780, and 1781, which we regard as one of the chief curiosities of American history. The assessments in the former year were, in silver, no less than eleven thousand, one hundred and four dollars, and sixty cents; and in the latter, ten thousand two hundred and ninety-five dollars, and thirty-nine cents. Let us recollect that the population of the town was but about thirteen hundred during all this period; that these annual expenses, stood in relation to those of the two last years of the history of Concord (1834 and 1835), as we infer from an allusion of Mr. Emerson's,‡ about as ten and eleven to four and five, the population being, in 1830, a little over two thousand; that this town, in common with the rest of the country, was of course feeling most sensibly all the economical effects of the war, and especially in its effects upon business, and the general means of earning the money they lavished so freely; that, in addition to taxes, large sums were raised in "classes," to hire soldiers, as well as by individuals, who were drafted into actual service, to procure substitutes. Let

#

Discourse, p. 38. + History, p. 126. + P. 40. § History, p. 127.

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us bear all this in mind, and we can do justice, in some small degree, to the spirit which induced them still to maintain their charge of the institutions of education and of religion, and of all the permanent interests of the town, as an independent community, amid the alarms of war. We can do justice also to the punctuality, the alacrity, the eagerness with which these sacrifices were made; and the manner is not less admirable than the amount. It never once hesitated or debated when called upon. It spent, as Mr. Emerson finely expresses it, it spent affectionately" in the public service. "Since," the records read in one place, "General Washington, at Cambridge, is not able to give but two dollars and forty-eight cents the cord, for wood, for the army, it is voted that this town encourage the inhabitants to supply the army, by paying two dollars per cord, over and above the General's price, to such as shall carry wood thither." They carried two hundred and ten cords. The same course was taken in regard to hay. And to crown all, Concord contributed to the relief of the besieged poor of Boston, in money, seventy pounds, besides two hundred and twenty-five bushels of grain, and a quantity of both meat and wood; and when these same sufferers were quartered by the Provincial Congress on the neighboring country, the town received no less than eighty-two of the number to its own firesides! What more can we add to all this for the glory of Concord? Was it necessary that the Buckleys, and the Willards, the Woods, the Elliotts, the Whitfields, the Emersons, the Langdons, should have honored its soil with their footsteps? That Winthrop and Dudley should have trod the old common where the meeting-house of 1712 still stands? Or that convention after convention, and congress after congress, should have selected it for the place of their Councils of Liberty, when Hancock and all his brave companions were added to its "jewels?" Or that here, in fine, without entering into controversy upon minutiæ, was partially, as President Dwight describes it, the scene of the first military action of the Revolution? Concord, as every body admits, was the object of the British expedition of 1775. We think it proved, while we perceive slight inaccuracies in Mr. Shattuck's chapter on this subject, that here was the first regular resistance to British troops by Americans. Here also, as far as can be now learned, the first British life was taken in that memorable defence. A head-stone and a footstone, on the green banks of the "grassy VOL. XLII.— NO. 91.

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river" still mark the place. The town, we believe, is about erecting a monument on the spot, a debt long due, alike to the character of the living, and to the memory of the dead.

So much for the fame of Concord. Much more might be added, had we time to follow its annals down, especially to the period of the formation and adoption of the state and national constitutions, and of the insurrection of Shays, and other troubles of that time. After all, we have left what may be called the private character, of the place, mostly undisturbed. It would be of the highest interest to trace its history, and the history of its connexion with the public, which we have barely alluded to. It would shew, as Mr. Emerson reminds us, that even "more sacred influences have mingled here with the stream of human life;" that the merit even of those who fill a space in the world's history, of which Concord has seen its share, "sheds a perfume less sweet than do the sacrifices of private virtue." It would exhibit a community "almost exclusively agricultural," distinguished always by simplicity, love of justice and contentment, as well as by its harmony, sound sense and religious character.

"Here are no ridiculous laws, no eves-dropping legislators, no hanging of witches, no ghosts, no whipping of quakers, no unnatural crimes. The tone of the records rises with the dignity of the event. These soiled and musty books are luminous and electric within. The old town clerks did not spell very correctly, but they contrive to make pretty intelligible the will of a free and just community. Frugal our fathers were, very frugal,though, for the most part, they deal generously by their minister, and provide well for the schools and the poor. If, at any time, in common with most of our towns, they have carried this economy to the verge of a vice, it is to be remembered that a town is, in many respects, a financial corporation. They economize, that they may sacrifice. They stint and higgle on the price of a pew, that they may send 200 soldiers to General Washington, to keep Great Britain at bay. For splendor, there must somewhere be rigid economy. That the head of the house may go brave, the members must be plainly clad, and the town must save that the State may spend."- pp. 41, 42.

us.

This, after all, is the picture of Concord which most pleases Long may it continue to be as true as it is beautiful. The poor farmers" who came up that day to defend their native soil, ignorant (says the orator) it was a deed of fame they

were doing, never dreaming their children would contend who had done the most,-long may their "simplest instincts" descend to their posterity, with their soil, and with their fame! "The little society of men who now, for a few years, fish in this river, plough the fields it washes, mow the grass, and reap the corn," these, when shortly they shall burry from its banks, as did their forefathers, long may they leave behind them a race emulating the glory of those who have gone before, and worthy of the gratitude of those who shall succeed them! Her sons, they who have "settled the region

around us, and far from us,' whose wagons rattle down (as he says again) the remote western hills, who plough the earth, and traverse the sea, and engage in trade and all the professions in every part of this country, and in many foreign parts,-long may they look back to her sacred plains with reverence, and cherish in their breasts the disposition to imitate the example of the past!

ART. VII. A Discourse on Natural Theology.

1. A Discourse on Natural Theology, showing the Nature of the Evidence and the Advantages of the Study. By LORD BROUGHAM, F.R.S. Philadelphia. Carey Lea & Blanchard. 1835. 12mo. pp. 190.

2. Lectures on the Atheistical Controversy; delivered in the Months of February and March, at Sion Chapel, Bradford. Yorkshire. Forming a First Part of a Course of Lectures on Infidelity. By the Rev. J. GODWIN; with additions by W. S. ANDREWS. Boston. Hilliard, Gray & Co. 1835. 12mo. pp. 350.

THE moral constitution of the universe presents a problem. that has perplexed the philosophers of all ages. When the mind of any one at all disposed to reflection, begins to expand itself and rise above merely physical and sensible things, it looks out from its new elevation with an anxious curiosity for the relations and prospects of existence. Though the child has been taught the existence of God, and the youth has felt the force of moral relations with the promptness of instinct, yet the man would fain contemplate the same subjects from a new point of