perfect thesaurus; and inasmuch as nothing is unimportant in the
history of the beginnings of such a nation as this is and is destined
to be, the _Magnalia_ will always remain a valuable and interesting
work. Cotton Mather, born in 1663, was of the second generation of
Americans, his grandfather being of the immigration, but his father a
native of Dorchester, Mass. A comparison of his writings and of the
writings of his contemporaries with the works of Bradford, Winthrop,
Hooker, and others of the original colonists, shows that the simple and
heroic faith of the Pilgrims had hardened into formalism and doctrinal
rigidity. The leaders of the Puritan exodus, notwithstanding their
intolerance of errors in belief, were comparatively broad-minded men.
They were sharers in a great national movement, and they came over when
their cause was warm with the glow of martyrdom and on the eve of its
coming triumph at home. After the Restoration, in 1660, the currents
of national feeling no longer circulated so freely through this distant
member of the body politic, and thought in America became more
provincial. The English dissenters, though socially at a disadvantage
as compared with the Church of England, had the great benefit of living
at the center of national life, and of feeling about them the pressure
of vast bodies of people who did not think as they did. In New
England, for many generations, the dominant sect had things all its own
way--a condition of things which is not healthy for any sect or party.
Hence Mather and the divines of his time appear in their writings very
much like so many Puritan bishops, jealous of their prerogatives,
magnifying their apostolate, and careful to maintain their authority
over the laity. Mather had an appetite for the marvelous, and took a
leading part in the witchcraft trials, of which he gave an account in
his _Wonders of the Invisible World_, 1693. To the quaint pages of the
_Magnalia_ our modern authors have resorted as to a collection of
romances or fairy tales. Whittier, for example, took from thence the