The first pages of most of these old papers are as soporific as a bed of
poppies. Here we have an erudite clergyman, or perhaps a Cambridge
professor, occupying several successive weeks with a criticism on Tate
and Brady, as compared with the New England version of the Psalms. Of
course, the preference is given to the native article. Here are doctors
disagreeing about the treatment of a putrid fever then prevalent, and
blackguarding each other with a characteristic virulence that renders the
controversy not altogether unreadable. Here are President Wigglesworth
and the Rev. Dr. Colman, endeavoring to raise a fund for the support of
missionaries among the Indians of Massachusetts Bay. Easy would be the
duties of such a mission now! Here--for there is nothing new under the
sun--are frequent complaints of the disordered state of the currency, and
the project of a bank with a capital of five hundred thousand pounds,
secured on lands. Here are literary essays, from the Gentleman's
Magazine; and squibs against the Pretender, from the London newspapers.
And here, occasionally, are specimens of New England honor, laboriously
light and lamentably mirthful, as if some very sober person, in his zeal
to be merry, were dancing a jig to the tune of a funeral-psalm. All this
is wearisome, and we must turn the leaf.

There is a good deal of amusement, and some profit, in the perusal of
those little items which characterize the manners and circumstances of
the country. New England was then in a state incomparably more
picturesque than at present, or than it has been within the memory of
man; there being, as yet, only a narrow strip of civilization along the
edge of a vast forest, peopled with enough of its original race to
contrast the savage life with the old customs of another world. The
white population, also, was diversified by the influx of all sorts of
expatriated vagabonds, and by the continual importation of bond-servants
from Ireland and elsewhere, so that there was a wild and unsettled