Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/319

Rh and first in the hearts of his countrymen." From the flash of that sword, beneath these branches, until it was finally sheathed at Yorktown, what heart-stirring events transpired for the historian, the politician, and the poet. The drama, which was conceived and commenced by the "Bay State," the noble mother of New England, and which in its progress more or less convulsed every member of the "Old Thirteen," reached its catastrophe and termination of glory in the "Ancient Dominion," where first the Saxon vine took root in the soil of this New World.

The venerated Tree, thus forever connected with the memory of the Father of our country, has a fitting and beautiful locality. Its foliage almost sweeps the walls of the most ancient University in the United States, for which the first appropriation was made in 1636, the year after the fathers of Connecticut took their departure from Cambridge, and began the settlement of Hartford.

It is touching and even sublime to recall the efforts made by our ancestors, to secure the means of education for their descendants, while themselves enduring the hardships and privations attendant on colonial life. Sixteen years from the first landing on the snow-clad rock of Plymouth had scarcely elapsed, ere they laid the plan of a collegiate institution, the poorest contributing from his poverty, perhaps only a bushel of corn, or a single volume, yet given with gladness and in hope. The infant colonies of Connecticut and