his logic, that it is said that the New Haven lawyers often sharpened their minds on Emmons’ sermons.  His scheme of making God the author of sin may be considered one of the errors of a great mind.  A modern novelist has placed old Dr. Hopkins among the characters of a romance.  But however great may be the powers of Mrs. Stowe, it was quite impossible for an aesthetic and poetic mind to grasp that bundle of dried-up syllogisms which once occupied the Newport pulpit.  Hopkins had preached the church at Great Barrington empty, and that of Newport died by lingering degrees.  Only to think of that tall, ungainly form, the head covered with a linen cap, stiff and white, coming forth like an apparition once a week to the public gaze.  We do not wonder at the child’s inquiry ‘if it was God that stood up there.’  Hopkins’ scheme of ‘indifferent affection’ was a grand conception, but as unnatural as grand:  yet it showed an amazing boldness for a public teacher to lay down as a postulate that a willingness to be damned was a condition of salvation.

From a survey of the earlier clergy, even as superficial as the present one, we are struck with its ambition of a lofty range of doctrine.  They

                            ’reasoned high
  Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
  Fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,
  And found no end in wandering mazes lost. 
  Of good and evil much they argued then,
  Of happiness, and final misery,
  Passion, and apathy, glory, and shame.’

The highest tribute which Milton could offer the fallen angels was that mental power which survived the general wreck.  And no lesser flight would have satisfied the subjects of this sketch.  Their lifelong effort was still to climb higher, ever exclaiming

  ‘—­Paula majora canamus.’

Their services in the cause of public education are beyond our appreciation, and it may be well for us to remember that Harvard, Yale, Williams, Union, Princeton, Amherst, Hanover, and other institutions, sprang from the bold philanthrophy of men so poor as often to be objects of pity.  They saw that knowledge is power, and that power they would not only possess, but bequeath to coming generations.

Long as these rambles have been, they would still be incomplete without a tribute to the influence of wives and mothers which soothed and mellowed the sterner aspect of primitive life; but this can only be referred to as a theme worthy of distinct treatment.  It should not be forgotten that the children reared under such influences have often been counted worthy of the highest stations of honor and trust; and although the scapegrace character of ministers’ sons is a common fling, yet careful research has proved that it has many and brilliant exceptions.

While penning these pages, my mind has often wandered over ancient burial-grounds where pastor and people sleep side by side.  One may find them in every New England town, and they chain with a spell of which the modern cemetery with its showy marbles knows nothing!  We turn from the fresh mortality, which chills us with its recent sorrows, to those massy headstones whose faint inscriptions tell of generations long since freed from toil.  Here one may find the rude monuments of those who still walk the earth and lead its progress, and here the heart may run over, as Byron says,