Elizabethan were strong-stomached observers of humanity. They knew a man when they saw one, and they measured his qualities largely.
Even if we make haste to admit that two great humanizers of society, art and letters, played but a sorry part in the Puritan colonies, we know they were less missed than if these colonies had been worldly ventures, established solely in the interest of agriculture or of trade. Sir Andrew Macphail tersely reminds us that the colonists possessed ideals of their own, "which so far transcended the things of this world that art and literature were not worth bothering about in comparison with them." Men who believe that, through some exceptional grace or good fortune, they have found God, feel little need of culture. If they believe that they share God with all races, all nations, and all ages, culture comes in the wake of religion. But the Puritan's God was a
