A NEW-ENGLAND SKETCH: BY THE AUTHOR OF MASSANIELLO, A TALE OF NAPLES.'

'A man severe he was, and stern to view.'- GOLDSMITH.

THERE is no employment more pleasant or profitable to the reflective mind, than that of scanning the various characters that come within the scope of one's acquaintance. Even though that acquaintance be limited to the precincts of a retired village, there will be found the same variety of character, though perhaps less strongly developed than in the great city of the world. In its business transactions and social relations, the same passions are found to agitate, that in a wider sphere of action convulse entire continents, and fill the world with wonder. Many an obscure person would have been a hero, in time and place of heroic actions.

COMFORT MAKEPEACE was a lineal descendant from one of the original puritans. The name of his ancestor stood recorded with those of Carver, Winslow, Brewster, and Standish; and no lordly stem of a noble stock ever prided himself more on the score of descent. His father, and his grandfather, and every other descendant of the primitive settler, that went before them, were as decided puritans as ever trod the turf. The name, as he himself bore it, had been transmitted from father to son, as far back as could be traced the genealogical tree of the family. The old homestead on which he lived had been cleared and settled by a grandson of the first Comfort that crossed the Atlantic; it had descended regularly from thence through every first son to the worthy owner in the time of my childhood, and there stood, ready to take the noble patrimony, at his father's death, a Comfort, junior, in every way worthy to connect the stout chain with remotest posterity. Of course Comfort made proud show of the strongly-marked characteristics for which his ancestors and their compeers were distinguished. A follower of Old Noll himself never walked more zealously in the rigid puritanical path, nor could any one have kept more faithfully every observance that had been handed down from the passengers in the good bark that first anchored off Plymouth-rock. While in his family, one might readily imagine himself transported back to that of some Roundhead Captain Fight-and-Praise-God, or Colonel Smite-'em-Hip-and-Thigh, in the service of the Great Protector.

Comfort Makepeace had married early in life, and he displayed no ordinary depth of judgment in the selection of one, scarce if any less than himself attached to the devotional customs of his puritanical ancestry. Faithful was an obedient wife and managed the household concerns with a prudence and care that would have done credit to the noblest. She rivalled the emblematic bee in industry, and helped her husband to make some substantial additions to the ample means that had descended to them. She bore him sons and daughters, in no stinted number; and under her maternal oversight, they grew up strong and comely, the pride of both. Comfort often spoke of her as a crown to her husband, and no one ever repeated with more sincerity the saying of the wise man of old.

Yet Faithful would have been wanting in the common attributes of her sex, not to have displayed some qualities less suited to the rigid temper and habits of her spouse. She had not escaped censure for some indications of worldly-mindedness, such as every good puritan was in duty bound to set his heart and face against. But all the sober teachings of a score of five-hour discourses could not eradicate from the breast of woman the unfailing distinctions of her sex. Faithful was in early youth, despite her rigid education, fond of what her husband was wont to denominate worldly show. The cut of her dress was apt to depart from some of the plain features of that of her grand-mother, and accord itself with some of the later and more gaudy fashions, worn by the less puritanical matrons of the village; and Comfort was often fain to think there were more lively colors in the ribbon with which she decked her bonnet, than comported with the strictness of the principles which they had inherited. So, too, he sometimes imagined his natural discernment had not failed him in detecting a lack of heart in some of the services which were maintained. Faithful had indeed professed her belief, that fatiguing exertions, continued early and late during six days of the week, formed ample excuse for nodding irregular measure to the drowsy god during some of the services on the Sabbath.

But the good puritan was most alarmed at a foreboding that the tinge of worldliness which affected the moral character of his wife, might interfere with the course he should pursue to train up his children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Perchance all these might have passed unheeded in the presence of more striking fallings-off within the limits that confined the earthly pilgrimage of the puritan; but he was a restless being, and for want of others more important, the trivial backslidings of his help-meet furnished ample incentive to the wailing of spirit in which he so often indulged.

Eleven children six sons and five daughters — blessed the union of Comfort and Faithful Makepeace, and the expressive appellations which they received, denoted well the vocabulary from which the names were selected. Comfort, junior, Ezekiel, Hezekiah, Micah, Habakkuk, and Preserved, told the males of the family, and those of the other sex were distinguished by names of equal import; Patience, Hope, Faith, Peace, and Charity. One after another, in regular succession, they grew up, and with the labor of older days sought to repay the care expended in their training. Their parents had entailed upon them no feeble constitutions, and the rigid rules by which they were reared, permitted of no such fashion of dress as should endanger the proper harmony of the system. Though a connoisseur might have applied to the features of the girls some more expressive epithet than that of mere plainness, they boasted of ruddy cheeks, and sparkling eyes, and healthful forms, that many a palelooking belle might have envied. Comfort had little faith in the teachings of later sages, who waged war with the precepts of Solomon, and he felt no inclination to spoil the child by spare use of the correcting rod. Many a puritanical principle, that illy accorded with the free spirit of childhood, was drummed into the characters of his progeny; and the same effective engine was often put in requisition to check them from the commission of some worldly action, One

could not look upon that staid household, from the iron-framed father down to the little tottering urchin who, ex-officio, as youngest, claimed all the privileges of pet, without comprehending at a glance the grave and rigid creed by which its concerns were regulated.

The puritanism of Comfort Makepeace was not confined to the mere matters of household regulations, or religious worship. It extended to all his business transactions, and marked all the social relations into which he was led. In the former, the most scrupulous honesty was at all times professed, though there were those, such as had little respect for the severity of his creed, who were ready to assert that he had a conscience so nice as to distinguish between telling a truth with intent to deceive, and absolute falsehood. A notorious stickler for what he termed the right, he was always found ready to drive a good bargain; and if report spoke truly, to overreach his neighbor, where it might be done without a palpable infringement of the rules of trade. In his neighborly intercourse, he ever preserved the same sober demeanor, using no unnecessary language, rarely indulging in a smile, and never in a decided laugh. Comfort could not be called unneighborly, nor did he ever acquire the credit of liberality. The poor went not away empty-handed, if copious meeds of advice and exhortation counted or availed aught; and sometimes they might rejoice in the gift of more substantial worldly aid. All may have heard of the person who excused dry eyes at an affecting charity discourse, by professing to belong to another parish; and it might not have unfrequently happened, that those who appealed to the benevolence of Comfort Makepeace, found him in a situation not widely dissimilar. Certainly, the rigidity of his principles did not permit him to associate with those who were denominated unsaintly, any farther than was necessary in the transaction of his worldly affairs. Yet Comfort lived too late in the world, to be wholly devoid of generous feeling. Apparent distress seldom failed to moisten his cheek with the tear of sympathy, or to touch him in that generally less sensitive spot-the purse.

There was probably no point in his creed, upon which Comfort insisted with more stubborn zeal, than that which poised the lance against amusements. I have said that he was seldom seen to smile, and never to indulge in a laugh outright. Every thing that was not included in the stern duties laid down in his laws of morality, was deemed frivolous and worldly, and meet to be discountenanced by all straight-walking servants of the Lord. Of course, the ebullitions of wit or humor were too strongly tinctured with the same unsaintly character, to find favor in his eyes. The theatre was a sink of pollution, and its extirpation he deemed an object worthy the prayers of every good man; and as for the drama - if perchance it was alluded to-he was wont to term it the distilled product of the devil's brain. But of all, most resolutely had Comfort set his face against dancing. It is doubtful if he esteemed the worship of the crucifix itself, or any other heathenish form of prelatical reverence, a more decided sin than the practice of promiscuous dancing. Despite his reverence for his puritan ancestry, Comfort was apt to be in many things a little peculiar, and in nothing more so than in his manner of reasoning. All representations of witches and goblins, he said, were agreed in

their frisking and dancing; and it was certainly a mild expression to say, that no good might arise from an exercise in which the imps of deviltry were, from their very nature, accustomed to indulge. But I will not attempt to follow the worthy old man through all the reasonings of the prolix discourse which he used so often to rehearse against the utter abomination of promiscuous dancing.

Comfort Makepeace was not insensible to the rapid progress of opinions and principles less rigid than those which he had inherited from his pilgrim fathers. He mourned often and deeply over the degeneracy of modern times, and grew more and more morose, as all the world about him waxed more frivolous and worldly-minded. His neighbors relaxed in the severity of the governing principles which had been handed down to them, and the rising generation were still more widely departing from the faith of their fathers. The land where puritanism had bid fair to hold permanent sway, was fast relapsing into grossest heresy, and the very evils, to escape from which his revered ancestor fled from the land of his birth, were swallowing up the whole people. Old men laughed and chatted, in familiar strains, and the young obeyed the impulse of a buoyant spirit, in revelling unchecked in the delights of social intercourse. Amusements the most frivolous, nay impious, feasting, theatre-going, and dancing, were creeping in apace, and leading frail human nature from her moorings. Even his old and favorite expounder of the faith, who had led his flock for half a century through the green pastures of righteousness, was forced to retire before the alarming spirit of innovation and worldliness. He had been superseded by a young man of airy habits, who had studied the frivolous rules of empty declamation, and who shortened, to a fearful degree, the length of his discourses; while every other exercise of the holy Sabbath became impregnated with the same spirit that was infecting the manners of the whole people. There was no limit to the terrible doctrines that were destroying the land.

Comfort Makepeace groaned often and audibly, as he witnessed the changes that had been for years going on around him. His neighbors, despite the zealous appeals he made, were fast falling off from the path of the faithful, and numbering themselves among the worldly sects. Morning prayer no longer sent them forth to labor, and their incoming from the field at night was no longer accompanied by the same devotional exercise. Exhortations, those heavenly weapons, were become less frequent; and even grace at meals was by very many dispensed with altogether. One had gone so far as to treat slightly, if not with absolute worldly ridicule, his respect for the holy scriptures. Mr. Makepeace, why give your son so outlandish a name as Habakkuk ?' 'Outlandish! Why, neighbor, it is a name from scripture!' 'Pooh!' replied the worlding, and so is Beelzebub !' The old man groaned from his inmost breast, but was silent.

But there were symptoms of falling off within the very household of the faithful, that still more afflicted the worthy puritan. In face of the solemn precepts that had been inculcated in long and frequent lectures, his own children gave indications of imbibing the dangerous sentiments which were abroad in the land. They were remiss in the performance of their duties, and had even advanced to the commis