his mistake with hundreds of the most learned and devout men of his time, in both hemispheres; that his part in the executions was no greater than that of others of high standing in England and America ; and that, more fully than any of them, he publicly and privately recanted.

The first entry is dated Dec. 3, 1673, when Sewall was a resident at Harvard College, where he had taken his bachelor's degree two years before: "I read to the Senior Sophisters, the 14th Chapter of Heerboord's Physick, i. e., part of it, which begins thus, Sensus Communes, etc. I went to the end, and then red it over from the beginning, which I ended the 24th of March, 1673." At this beginning of his diarizing, Sewall was just twenty-one years old. He continued to write until "Feria Secunda, Octob! 13, 1729," when he was an old man of seventy-seven (to die within three months); recording that "Judge Davenport comes to me between ten and eleven a-clock in the morning and speaks to me on behalf of Mr. Addington Davenport, his eldest Son, that he might have Liberty to wait upon Jane Hirst [Sewall's granddaughter], now at my House, in way of Courtship. He told me he would deal by him as his eldest Son, and more than so. Inten'd to build a House where his uncle Addington dwelt for him; and that he should have his Pue in the Old Meetinghouse. I gave him my Hand at his going away, and acknowledged his Respect to me and granted his desire. He said Madam Addington would wait upon me. His honour the Lieut. Governor visited me quickly after, and ac

quainted me that he design'd for Newbury in a day or two, to stay a week or fortnight. I informed his Honor of what Mr. Davenport had been about; his Honor approved it much, Comended the young Man, and reckon'd it a very good Match.”

Fifty-six years separate the young Harvard instructor from the courtly old man, making "a very good match" for his granddaughter. In the chronicle of these years all things are noted; it is hard to sample so great a store. One day (March 18, 1701) he will tell us that "Last night I heard several Claps of Thunder: Great Fogg to day"; and the next day be a historical entry : We hear by the way of Virginia that War is proclaimed between England and France." Then Lord Bellomont dies and is honored, and a lesser event occurs: "the Artillery Company give three Volleys in the middle of the Town when they came out of the field, with regard to my Lord. Col. Townsend wears a Wigg to day." Sewall himself never would wear a wig; the Lord had given and taken away his hair, and he would not borrow any, though the lack partly caused him the loss of goodly Katherine Winthrop when he went a-courting in his old age. Politics and wigs, piety and dinners come side by side: "Text, wisdom is the principal thing. Grace is Glory in the Bud; Glory is Grace full-blown. Din'd with Mr. Belchar." Mr. Cotton Mather prays for the College and other schools. Mr. Ezk. Lewis marries the widow Kilcup." Post hoc and propter hoc combine : Sept 12th Mrs. Tuthill falls through a Trap Door into the cellar, breaks her right Thigh just above

the knee, so that the bones pierce through the skin. -Sept 19. Mrs. Tuthill dies." Funeral records abound from first to last: the Judge never let slip any opportunity of "assisting" at these melancholy scenes. Marriages and dinner parties were less numerous, but duly appreciated. At sick-beds the good man was often present, praying that physic might precede "restauration"; and he was an inveterate bestower of small charities, the price of which, whether pious books or sweet-meats, was almost always duly noted. Of the orthodoxy, new buildings, and belongings at Harvard he took due care, and specially liked Commencement-day. Once when his son was taken sick on the latter occasion he ill concealed his vexation. He sat in courts, civil and ecclesiastical; he summarized sermons, and occasionally admonished the clergy on doctrinal points. He liked the good old times, and deplored the degeneracy of the later Puritans, but he had his own modest pleasures and chastened enjoyments of this world's good things,-funerals included. But in almost all things he was dignified, sensible, and genuinely pious. He began his works with a prayer; he ended them with a Laus Deo.*

Thomas

Prince,

In 1736, in Boston, appeared a tidy little volume which was in every way creditable to the incipient literature of the colony. It was It was 1687-1758. neatly "printed by Kneeland & Green for S. Gerrish," in 18mo, with sober black borders around the

* Sewall's "Diary " fills vols. V.-VII. of the Fifth Series of the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The learned editor was George E. Ellis, D.D.; his associates on the committee of publication, Mr. Whitmore, Prof. H. W. Torrey, and Prof. James Russell Lowell.

page, various typographical devices for convenient reference, and a rubricated title-page, setting forth the ambitious scope of the work. It was not a manuscript record, like Bradford's or Winslow's, nor a glorification of a new Canaan, nor a mere collection of other men's words; but it was planned to be "A Chronological History of New-England in the Form of Annals: being a summary and exact Account of the most material Transactions and Occurrences relating to This Country, in the Order of Time wherein they happened, from the Discovery by Capt. Gosnold in 1602, to the Arrival of Governor Belcher, in 1730." This comparatively modest scheme was preluded by " an Introduction, containing a brief Epitome of the most remarkable Transactions and Events Abroad, from the Creation: Including the connected Line of Time, the Succession of Patriarchs and Sovereigns of the most famous Kingdoms & Empires, the gradual Discoveries of America, and the Progress of the Reformation to the Discovery of New England." The learned and ambitious author was Thomas Prince, M.A., minister of the Old South Church in Boston. The time had come, he thought, for a compendious history of New England, with a general historical introduction. His mottoes, from Deuteronomy and Job, were : "Remember the Days of Old, consider the Years of Many Generations"; "For enquire, I pray thee, of the former Age, and prepare thy self for the Search of their Fathers." The good clergyman was trying to do for New England what the monastic authors of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle accomplished for Old England six or seven hundred years before.

Prince was a Massachusetts man by birth and education; Sandwich was his native town; he duly graduated at Harvard; entered the former profession of Harvard-the ministry; and when thirty-one years old became minister of the Old South (Third Congregational) Church in Boston. Those were the days of long pastorates, and Prince held his position for forty years. Foreign travel and a studious habit aided his influence, which was as wide as that of the chief ministers of his day in the New England metropolis. His historical reading was specially thorough, and though his learning was less than that of the English prodigies of the previous century, it was undoubtedly more solid than that of the pretentious Cotton Mather. Prince dabbled in science without unsettling his faith, and he read and wrote history in a patient and philosophic spirit. He did American historical work of the second stage; he took diaries, letters, and documents and drew from them an orderly, continuous, and trustworthy narrative. His library was the best in his time, and the use he made of it keeps his name in honorable memory. His book suffers from its form-that of annals,—but an uninterrupted historical narrative was perhaps too much to expect in those days. The annal style was fashionable; and, at least, it had the advantage of conciseness and accuracy, the qualities specially needed. Prince was determined to test every statement submitted to his judgment; and to print only what was likely to be of permanent value. Clearly American literature, poor as it was, had got beyond the John-Smith stage.