of appeasing them, he tells them that the indulgence of such feelings at all is a yielding to “temptation,” being under “the clouds of human weakness,” and “a bewraying of remaining corruption.”  Indeed, the theology of that day, it must be allowed, bore very hard upon even the best and most sacred affections of our nature.  The council, in their Result, allude to the feelings of those whose parents, and other most loved and honored relatives and connections, had been so cruelly torn from them and put to death, as “infirmities discovered by them in such an heart-breaking day,” and bespeak for their grief and lamentations a charitable construction.  They ask the church, whose hands were red with the blood of their innocent and dearest friends, not to pursue them with “more critical and vigorous proceedings” in consequence of their exhibiting these natural sensibilities on the occasion, but “to treat them with bowels of much compassion.”  These views had taken full effect upon Mr. Parris, and obliterated from his breast all such “infirmities.”  This is the only explanation or apology that can be made for him.

Of the history of Cotton Mather, subsequently to the witchcraft prosecutions, and more or less in consequence of his agency in them, it may be said that the residue of his life was doomed to disappointment, and imbittered by reproach and defeat.  The storm of fanatical delusion, which he doubted not would carry him to the heights of clerical and spiritual power, in America and everywhere, had left him a wreck.  His political aspirations, always one of his strongest passions, were wholly blasted; and the great aim and crown of his ambition, the Presidency of Harvard College, once and again and for ever had eluded his grasp.  I leave him to tell his story, and reveal the state of his mind and heart in his own most free and full expressions from his private diary for the year 1724.

“1.  What has a gracious Lord helped me to do for the seafaring tribe, in prayers for them, in sermons to them, in books bestowed upon them, and in various projections and endeavors to render the sailors a happy generation?  And yet there is not a man in the world so reviled, so slandered, so cursed among sailors.

“2.  What has a gracious Lord helped me to do for the instruction and salvation and comfort of the poor negroes?  And yet some, on purpose to affront me, call their negroes by the name of COTTON MATHER, that so they may, with some shadow of truth, assert crimes as committed by one of that name, which the hearers take to be Me.

“3.  What has a gracious Lord given me to do for the profit and honor of the female sex, especially in publishing the virtuous and laudable characters of holy women?  And yet where is the man whom the female sex have spit more of their venom at?  I have cause to question whether there are twice ten in the town but what have, at some time or other, spoken basely