The oldest of the present Colonies of Great Britain is Newfoundland, obtained by settlement in 1608; Bermuda was obtained in 1609; St. Christopher, in 1623; Barbadoes, in 1625; Nevis, in 1628; Bahamas, in 1629; Gambia, in 1631; and Antigua, in 1632. There are fifty distinct colonial governments over the British possessions.

156,876 955,650

3,107,461 1,418,776

3,368,904

NOTE E.

From the N. Y. Christian Times of Nov. 20, 1862.

THE POPHAM CELEBRATION.

ACTION OF THE NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

AMONG the pleasing incidents not remotely connected with the meeting of the General Convention, was the gathering of a number of the members of that body, both clerical and lay, of acknowledged interest in historical pursuits, at the October meeting of the New-York Historical Society, to notice appropriately the late celebration of the Popham settlement at the mouth of the Kennebec. Invitations were extended by the courtly and accomplished President of the New-York Historical Society, the Hon. Luther Bradish, in behalf of the Society, to a number of the Bishops, to the delegation from the Diocese of Maine, and to several prominent members of the Maine and Massachusetts Historical Societies at that time in New-York, to be present on this interesting occasion. The invitation was very generally responded to; and, among others, the Rev. James Craik, D.D., of Kentucky, President of the House of Clerical and Lay Deputies; the Hon. R. C. Winthrop, President of the Massachusetts Historical Society; Prof.

Shattuck, of Boston; the Rev. Dr. Edson, of Lowell; the Hon. John A. Poor, and the Rev. William Stevens Perry, of Portland, members of the Maine Historical Society, were received by a large and brilliant assembly, consisting of prominent historical and literary characters of New-York and vicinity, in the elegant hall of the Society, on Second Avenue.

After the paper of the evening was read, the Hon. Luther Bradish, Pręsident of the Society, said, that in reporting upon the miscellaneous business of the Society, it was his pleasing duty to refer to an interesting event that had taken place during the vacation-the celebration in Maine of the founding of the English race in the New World. In many particulars, this celebration was one of the most memorable and successful historical commemorations that had yet taken place. On the Peninsula of Sabino, at the mouth of the ancient Sagadahoc, the modern Kennebec river, in the State of Maine, the two hundred and fifty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the first English colony on the shores of New-England was celebrated on the 29th of August, 1862, at which, after the use of the old words of prayer and praise of the English Prayer-Book of that time, an eloquent and appropriate oration, with speeches, was delivered, and other proceedings took place, at the erection of a monumental stone in the walls of Fort Popham. The New-York Historical Society, through its President, was honored with an invitation to participate in that celebration. Absence from home prevented his receiving the invitation in time to be present, had his health permitted. He had replied in what he trusted were appropriate terms. He was glad to know that other members of this Society had responded for our city and State. He regretted that we had not been able to do full justice to our sense of obligation to our sister Society in Maine. He trusted the Society would in some form take notice of it in an appropriate manner.

The Hon. George Folsom, a son of Maine, and well known as the learned historian of one of Maine's cradle homes of civilization and Episcopacy, rose, and said he fully sympathized in all that had fallen from the President; he regretted that absence in Canada, with his family, prevented his acceptance, in person, of the honor done him by an invitation. He asked leave to introduce the following resolution :

“Resolved, That the New-York Historical Society has observed with pleasure the efforts of the Historical Society of Maine to perpetuate the earliest history of their State, by associating important historic events with the great works of national defence of the United States Government; that they acknowledge with satisfaction the courtesy extended by the Historical Society and citizens of Maine, inviting the Society and its officers to participate in the commemorative celebration of the founding of the first colony on the shores of New-England, on the two hundred and fifty-fifth anniversary of that event, on the 29th of August, 1862, at which time a memorial stone was placed in the walls of Fort Popham commemorating the establishment of the first Protestant civil government on the shores of NewEngland; that this Society cordially approves the act of its President, in his reply to the invitation to participate in that celebration, and the goodwill therein expressed; that all such efforts to preserve and illustrate the history of our race in the new world are worthy of general notice."

The Hon. J. Romeyn Brodhead said he seconded the resolution with great pleasure. He was pleased further to learn that several members of the Maine Historical Society had honored our meeting by their presence this evening, as had the President of the Historical Society of Massachusetts. Among others from Maine, the orator of the Popham Celebration, the Hon. Mr. Poor, was present, and he trusted this resolution would be adopted and that Mr. Poor would be called on to favor us with some reply thereto. The resolution was unanimously adopted. In reply to a call from the

President, Mr. Poor said his associates of the Maine Historical Society and other friends from Maine present, with himself, felt personally complimented by the action here taken, in reference to the Popham Celebration. He rose with a feeling of embarrassment to return thanks for this cordial and unlooked for compliment. He doubted not that the Historical Society of Maine would, in its own befitting manner, return appropriate acknowledgments for this generous courtesy on the part of the New-York Historical Society.

The Popham Celebration, so courteously alluded to, had already borne fruits, in awakened attention to the study of the early history of the country, and we are largely indebted to eminent historical minds of New-York for much of the interest already attached to it. The fact so happily alluded to by your own historian, Mr. Brodhead, the political connection between New-York and Maine under the charter of Charles II., in his most interesting and appropriate reply to the invitation to speak for the great metropolis of the New World, cannot fail to excite a feeling of mutual sympathy, at this day, with the more recent but increasing commercial intimacy of the two States. It is certainly refreshing to revive and recall, for this brief hour, the kindly intercourse of other days. It is a fact, almost forgotten, even by the active men of this time, that much the largest portion of Maine was at one time under the same government as that of New-York, and that Gyles Goddard, the renowned representative from Pemaquid, sat in the Legislature of New-York in 1684, chosen by the free-holders of the county of Cornwall, in ancient Sagadahoc. This letter of Mr. Brodhead, already published in the Maine papers, will be preserved in our memorial volume as one of the choicest of the many interesting contributions to its pages. The courteous and appropriate letter of your President is already published in the papers of Maine.

One from the Hon. Mr. Bancroft, the most eminent of living American historians, and another from one of Maine's honored sons, Mr. Folsom, are promised for this volume. Mr. Folsom's invaluable labors in bringing to light and preserving the earliest history of his native State, have been publicly acknowledged by formal resolutions of the Maine Historical Society. New-York, therefore, will have a foremost position, if not, in fact, the post of honor, in the records of that commemorative festival.

That celebration was well calculated to attract attention, for in its purpose it appeals at once to the sympathy of all who speak the English language, or share in any proper measure a feeling of pride at the achievements of our race. It had for its object the due observance of the great fact, the planting of our race in North-America, with the language, literature, laws, and religion of England, an event, if rightly comprehended in its relations and consequences, of as much importance as any one that has taken place since the establishment of the Roman Empire.

Eight years before the Leyden Church had been gathered in Holland, under the charge of the pious Robinson, twenty years before they set foot on Plymouth sands, the purpose of "planting colonies in the north-west of North-America" had been set forth in a paper on file in the British State Paper Office. More than thirteen years prior to the voyage of the May Flower, the title of Old England to New England had been secured by a formal act of possession and occupation at the mouth of the Sagadahoc by Governor Popham's colony* No Frenchman ever set foot on the Atlantic

*The Seven Articles of the Leyden Flock, signed by Robinson and Brewster, sent to King James before their departure from Holland, signifying their full assent to the authority of the English Church, form a striking contrast to their subsequent pretensions, under the guidance of such men as Bradford and Winslow. See Poor's Vindication of Gorges, p. 108, for this remarkable document in full.

shore, claiming title west of the Kennebec, after the planting of Popham's colony in 1607.

The Colonial Empire of Great Britain, the wonder of this age, had its root in the charter of April tenth, 1606, and its development in the New-England charter of 1620, both granted on the petitions of Sir Ferdinando Gorges. The great idea of a strong central government, having extended dominions in distant lands, divided into separate provinces, communities, and states, each enjoying equal and just laws, suited to the local wants of each, fully developed in action under the rule of Cromwell, originated in an earlier day, and in the mind of him who secured those great charters, and maintained them till the soil of the New World was planted with our race, where it has gradually advanced toward universal dominion.

The failure of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, of Sir Walter Raleigh, and of Sir Richard Grenville to comprehend the geographical and commercial laws that control the destiny of races and of empires, imposed on Sir Ferdinando Gorges, or rather left to him, the task of occupying the continent of NorthAmerica, from the fortieth to the forty-eighth parallel of north latitude, in which limits, in spite of individual jealousy and parliamentary injustice, he achieved the great work of English colonization in America. In their zeal against monopolies, in 1621 and 1622, the Commons of England declared fishing is of more value than plantations in America," and would have abandoned the continent to the French but for the pertinacity, foresight, and enlightened views of Gorges, and his favor with the King, from the possession of these great qualities.

But the chief significance of the Popham Celebration, undoubtedly, is the introduction of a new principle in the naming of our forts, making them serve the double purpose of national defence and of preserving the memory of the great events in our history.

We have seen the national honor tarnished, and the moral sense of the nation shocked, by the bestowal of unworthy names-names of mere partisan leaders upon national vessels, forts, and other public works. This form of coarse flattery panders to the lower tastes of men and destroys the independence of official men, who are made the recipients of it.

It was, therefore, with a feeling of relief that Gen. Totten was pleased to accept the proposal of affixing to the great work in Portland harbor the name of Fort Gorges, in honor of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the father of English colonization in America, and naming the new work at the mouth of the Sagadahoc or Kennebec Fort Popham, in a similar spirit, and we hope to see this rule made universal. Especially do we look forward to the construction of a new fort, to guard the entrance to Portland harbor, to be named Fort Gosnold, and placed on the shore of Cape Elizabeth, the first point of the northern main of New-England, touched by that great English navigator, who has left on record the details of his discovery of the NewEngland coast in 1602.

The fitness of the policy proposed will be readily appreciated by all men endowed with any share of that quality we call the historic sense; for all know that the reputation of no public man is secure within the first hundred years after his death. Personal ambition, partisan motives, and narrow views characterize the popular movements of every age-our own as of all past ones-and the value of no man's life can be justly measured in his own time. We build monuments, we name towns, cities, and counties, for men that a future age will hold in disfavor. We almost execrate the memory of men to-day, that a later time shall honor. We rear in affected grandeur an obelisk in devotion to the demon of war, that the calmer reason of the coming centuries will demolish or condemn. We do homage to popular partisan leaders to-day, whose doctrines have undermined the foundations of our Government and brought upon us civil war.

Thanks to the good sense of the people of the Empire State, they have preserved the name of their great navigator, Hudson, from any possibility of forgetfulness or decay, by affixing it to the great river of the mountains that must forever bear to this great metropolis the treasures of an expanding commerce with the interior.

Looking back to the first dawnings of American history, we are beginning to discover the superior lustre of the great lights that guided hitherward the adventurcus and heroic spirits of that great age. Under their benignant glow we revisit the spots made sacred by self-denying labors. We hope to strengthen our love of what is noble and heroic by an annual pilgrimage to that spot where, in prayer and faith, the foundations of empire in the New World were laid.

Associating the history of Maine with New-York, so appropriately done by Mr. Brodhead, may serve to increase your interest in our State.

Maine

so rich in historic interest, so full of legendary romance, so marked by the fascinations of its scenery ;* the territory claimed by the great European powers, Spain, Holland, France, and England; the home of the earliest French settlers and of the first English colonists; the Norumbega of Milton's Paradise Lost, the Mavosheen of Purchase's strange narration; "discovered by the English in 1602, '3, '5, '6, '7, '8, and '9;" the New-England of John Smith in 1614, and of later times-obeys the law of historic as of commercial gravitation and gladly finds sympathy, "without reservation," in the great metropolis of the Western World.

Maine, too, builds the ships that fill the docks of the East River and the Hudson. She lifts from her quarries the granite columns that form the ornaments and support of your public edifices, and the rich colonnades and solid walls of the Treasury Extension at Washington. She needs, most of all, the pen of the historian and the pencil of the painter, to be made as familiar as household words in the private residences of the Fifth Avenue and Madison Square, by means of landscapes that shall equal in beauty the richest scenery of the Rhine and the Alps; true to nature from the seashores, the valleys, and the mountains of Maine. With her summer retreats thus laid open, she shall annually attract pleasure tourists of other lands than our own.

Rejoicing in the success of your Society, and grateful for your generous courtesy, I may be allowed to close, as I began, by expressing for our Society and its members, here present, the assurance of our hearty thanks.

* "We, Americans, neglecting both the surpassing magnificence-nay, often sublimity and the rare loveliness of various districts of our own Continent, wander forth across the seas, to seck, at great expense, and amid physical and moral dangers, scenery in foreign lands, which falls short of the attractions of much we possess at home. Thus, how few are alive to the glorious and varied beauty of that zone of islands, which, commencing with the perfection of Casco Bay, terminates with the precipitous, seal-frequented shores of Grand-Menan, at the entrance of the Bay of Fundy. Of all the Archipelagoes sung by the poet, described by the historian, and depicted by the painter, there is none which can exceed, in its union of charms, those two hundred miles of intermingling land and ocean, where, lost in each other's embrace, the sea seems in love with the land, and the shore with the foam-frosted waves !"-General J. Watts de Peyster's Dutch in Maine, p. 44.