76    UNITED STATES GAZETTEER.

It shared the prayers and best wishes of ministers and churches, and proved a nursery of many
“ plants of renown," distinguished not in the walks of sacred labor alone, but in council, at the
bar, upon the bench, and even in the field. For more than half a century it was the only col-
lege in North America, and is now the best endowed of all our literary institutions. Within
the present bounds of the commonwealth, two other institutions, Williamstown and Amherst
Colleges, have since been incorporated, and have enjoyed a very considerable share of legis-
lative patronage, besides the results of private liberality. In addition to these is the important
Theological Seminary at Andover, whose graduates are found, not officiating as pastors of
our own churches only, but laboring in the missionary stations, from the Sandwich Islands, in
the east, to the regions assigned our own Indians in the west; also a similar institution of
the Baptist denomination at Newton, emulating its elder sister,, and the “Wesleyan Academy "
of the Methodists at Wilbraham.*

Equal attention was at an early period paid to the establishment of common schools in the
several townships ; and academies have been founded in not a few of the counties of the state,
as at Andover in Essex county, Leicester in Worcester county, &c. Thus it has resulted
that the inhabitants are found capable of reading, writing, and casting accounts, with very
rare exceptions among male and female adults, to an extent as great, probably, as in any state
of the Union, with the exception perhaps of Connecticut, and comparing with any the most
favored population in the world. Indeed, the schools of Massachusetts have been and are the
just cause of gratulation and pleasure with every intelligent friend to the permanent prosperity
of its citizens.

III. In its churches.

These were esteemed by their founders the glory of the community. For the enjoyment
and transmission of religious liberty, mainly, the country had been settled. As is specified in
their patent, and as they profess in the articles of their association, it was to advance the
kingdom of Christ by the conversion of the savages of America, as well as to escape the
pains and penalties of unrighteous orders in council against liberty of conscience in religion,
that they were willing to encounter the perils of the sea, or the equally threatening perils of
the land. “ O that I might have heard you had converted some, before you had killed any,"
exclaimed the pious Robinson in Holland, when, in 1623, he heard of the bold energy of
the warrior Standish,! who had stifled a threatening insurrection of Indians against the
feeble colony, by killing with his own hand its fomenter and leader. And this was the feeling-
which prompted the missionary labors of “ the apostle " Eliot, as that early, consistent, and
attached friend of the Indians, and who translated the whole Bible into their language, has
not unaptly been named. Nay, it was chiefly through the efforts of Governor Winslow,
when visiting England on the affairs of the colony, that in 1649 was founded the Society for
propagating the Gospel, having principally in view America as its field of labor. Gookin,
the Mayhews, and other worthies exerted themselves nobly in this cause; and several Indian
churches were gathered, and sustained as long as subjects for such attention continued among us.

Harvard College was soon in a capacity to supply no small number of those worthy men,
who formed an efficient ministry for the multiplied religious communities that grew up with
the respective settlements or towns. These churches were gathered, served, and maintained,
with direct reference to the authority of the Holy Scriptures. Their first supply came, of course,
from abroad, for not a class received the honors of the college till more than twenty years after
the settlement at Plymouth; and even afterwards, especially on the disgraceful persecutions
that so soon followed the restoration of the monarchy in the person of Charles II., several
excellent ministers accrued to our commonwealth, and shone as lights in the churches, aiding to
maintain in them a primitive faith and a holy practice.

IV. In the industrial pursuits of its inhabitants.

The evidence of thrift, in an application to all those arts and employments by which human
life is sustained, rendered comfortable, or adorned, is in few communities more rife, percep-

* See State Institutions.    f See Allen's Biog. Diet., &c.