Of the latter, in great part, was the Huguenot noblesse, from
Conde, who aspired to the crown,
"Ce petit homme tant joli,
Qui toujours chante, toujours rit,"
to the younger son of the impoverished seigneur whose patrimony was his
sword. More than this, the restless, the factious, and the discontented,
began to link their fortunes to a party whose triumph would involve
confiscation of the wealth of the only rich class in France. An element
of the great revolution was already mingling in the strife of religions.
America was still a land of wonder. The ancient spell still hung
unbroken over the wild, vast world of mystery beyond the sea,--a land
of romance, adventure, and gold.
Fifty-eight years later the Puritans landed on the sands of
Massachusetts Bay. The illusion was gone,--the ignis fatuus of
adventure, the dream of wealth. The rugged wilderness offered only a
stern and hard won independence. In their own hearts, and not in the
promptings of a great leader or the patronage of an equivocal
government, their enterprise found its birth and its achievement. They
were of the boldest and most earnest of their sect. There were such
among the French disciples of Calvin; but no Mayflower ever sailed from
a port of France. Coligny's colonists were of a different stamp, and
widely different was their fate.
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