accompanying disposition, with the means of carrying it into effect,
to transmit a knowledge of himself and his own times to his
successors, we discover the wise and admirable arrangement of a
providence which removes the worn-out individual to a better country,
but leaves the acquisitions of his mind and the benefit of his
experience as an accumulating and common fund for the use of his
posterity; which has secured the continued renovation of the race,
without the loss of the wisdom of each generation.

These considerations suggest the true definition of history. It is the
instrument by which the results of the great experiment of human
action on this theatre of being are collected and transmitted from age
to age. Speaking through the records of history, the generations that
have gone warn and guide the generations that follow. History is the
Past, teaching Philosophy to the Present, for the Future.

Since this is the true and proper design of history, it assumes an
exalted station among the branches of human knowledge. Every community
that aspires to become intelligent and virtuous should cherish it.
Institutions for the promotion and diffusion of useful information
should have special reference to it. And all people should be induced
to look back to the days of their forefathers, to be warned by their
errors, instructed by their wisdom, and stimulated in the career of
improvement by the example of their virtues.

The historian would find a great amount and variety of materials in
the annals of this old town,--greater, perhaps, than in any other of
its grade in the country. But there is one chapter in our history of
pre-eminent interest and importance. The witchcraft delusion of 1692
has attracted universal attention since the date of its occurrence,