translucent and effective forms.  Considering that his academic education was early broken off, and many intermediate years were spent in commercial pursuits, his learning and attainments are quite remarkable.  The various troubles and tragic mischiefs of his life, the terrible wrongs he inflicted on others, and the retributions he brought upon himself, are traceable to two or three peculiarities in his mental and moral organization.

He had a passion for a scene, a ceremony, an excitement.  He delighted in the exercise of power, and rejoiced in conflicts or commotions, from the exhilaration they occasioned, and the opportunity they gave for the gratification of the activity of his nature.  He pursued the object of getting possession of the ministry house and land with such desperate pertinacity, not, I think, from avaricious motives, but for the sake of the power it would give him as a considerable landholder.  His love of form and public excitement led him to operate as he did with his church.  He kept it in continual action during the few years of his ministry.  He had at least seventy-five special meetings of that body, without counting those which probably occurred without number, but of which there is no record, during the six months of the witchcraft period.  Twice, the brethren gave out, wholly exhausted; and the powers of the church were, by vote, transferred to a special committee, to act in its behalf, composed of persons who had time and strength to spare.  But Mr. Parris, never weary of excitement, would have been delighted to preside over church-meetings, and to be a participator in vehement proceedings, every day of his life.  The more noisy and heated the contention, the more he enjoyed it.  During all the transactions connected with the witchcraft prosecutions, he was everywhere present, always wide awake, full of animation, if not cheerfulness, and ready to take any part to carry them on.  These propensities and dispositions were fraught with danger, and prolific of evil in his case, in consequence of what looks very much like a total want in himself of many of the natural human sensibilities, and an inability to apprehend them in others.  Through all the horrors of the witchcraft prosecutions, he never evinced the slightest sensibility, and never seemed to be aware that anybody else had any.  It was not absolute cruelty, but the absence of what may be regarded as a natural sense.  It was not a positive wickedness, but a negative defect.  He seemed to be surprised that other people had sentiments, and could not understand why Tarbell and Nurse felt so badly about the execution of their mother.  He told them to their faces, without dreaming of giving them offence, that, while they thought she was innocent, and he thought she was guilty and had been justly put to death, it was a mere difference of opinion, as about an indifferent matter.  In his “Meditations for Peace,” presented to these dissatisfied brethren, for the purpose and with an earnest desire