‘The furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke.’

These men indeed united mental and physical labor in a remarkable degree.  The long winters were devoted to study, to sermons, or to meetings,—­the summer to the plow and the harvest.  One instance is on record in which the entire stock of a year’s sermons were written between December and April.  But, notwithstanding the inevitable drudgery of such a life, the ministry was, upon the whole, noted for study.  The course held at Harvard required close application, and even at the chapel exercises the Scriptures were daily read in the original languages.  These labors and studies are recorded in that quaintest of all American books, Mather’s Magnalia.  Whatever be the pedantry and vanity of its author, he is undeniably worthy of rank among the men whom he chronicled.  Indeed, the Mathers, father and son, illustrated a race of rare moral and intellectual power.  The first of these, who enjoyed the profitable name of ‘Increase,’ was equally popular and successful as president of Harvard or pastor of the church of Cambridge, and the son takes little pains to conceal his filial pride as he blazons the virtues of ‘Crescentius Madderus.’  He is particular in recording him as the first American divine who received the honorary title D.D.  As one looks back upon the primitive days of the nascent university, he is struck by the contrast between the present numerous and stately array of halls, the magnificent library, and all the pomp of a modern commencement, and the slender procession of rudely clad youth led by Increase Mather.  As they marched out of the old shaky college and filed into the antique meeting-house, what would they have said to a glimpse of Gore Hall and its surroundings?  But those were the beginnings of greatness, simple as they were.

The pages of the Magnalia are filled with portraits hit off in a masterly style.  Mather was a true ‘Porte Crayon,’ and knew how to bring out salient points with a few happy touches.  His picture-gallery is like an ancient Valhalla, full of demigods.  Among their characteristics are strong contrasts.  Here are piety and poverty and learning, hand in hand.  These men, as we have stated, could swing the axe, or chop logic, at a moment’s notice; could pull vegetables, or dig out Hebrew roots, with alternate ease.  Notwithstanding their long days of labor, their minds kept their edge, being freshly set by incessant doctrinal disputations.  Such, indeed, was the public appetite for controversy that polemic warfare never slumbered.  Our view of their character is assisted by a contrast with the English clergy of the same day, and which reveals shameful deformities on the part of the latter—­avarice, indolence, and gluttony.  Of such, Milton spake in Lycidas, with withering contempt, as those who

    ‘for their bellies’ sake
  Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold.’

If the Puritan poet be charged with prejudice, we have only to turn to the pages of Macaulay for confirmation.  Where, indeed, if this be true, did Fielding obtain the originals for the ordinary at Newgate, or ‘parson Trulliber’ in Joseph Andrews?