Harvard. It meant being one of the clerical or magisterial order. It meant the possession of preeminent advantages. But the relation of the clergy to the community had already become very different from what it had been in the earlier days of the Colony. The contrast between the prominent position in public affairs, the wide and strong influence, the admitted authority of the uncle, and the tranquil, retired life, and the narrow limits of influence of the nephew, was not altogether the result of diversity of opportunities and gifts....

"The year 1678 was an important one in the life of the young scholar. In that year he was married, in that year he was settled over this parish, and in that year he published a poem. It was a 'Funeral Elogy, Upon that Patron of Virtue, the truly pious, peerless & matchless Gentlewoman, Mrs. Anne Bradstreet.' I find in my ancestor's performance very slight merit, though it gives indication of formal training in the stiff poetic fashion of the day; but the enthusiastic historian of American Literature, Professor Tyler, who has an eye for swans, discovers in it 'force' and 'beauty,' calls it 'a sorrowful and stately chant,' and even ascribes 'poetic genius' to its author. Its real interest is in the proof that he possessed a fair measure of such culture him about coming into the Church. He told me that he waited to see whether his faith were of the operation of God's spirit, and yet often said that he had very good hope of his good Estate. . . . He said, was unsettled, had thoughts of going out of the country. . . . And at last, that he was for that way which was purely Independent. I urged what that was. He said that all of the Church were a royal Priesthood, all of them Prophets and taught of God's Spirit, and that a few words from the heart were worth a great deal: intimating the Benefit of Brethrens Prophesying; for this he cited Mr. Dell. I could not get any more."" (Norton's footnote.)

as was possible in New England at the time, and that he brought to Hingham the refined tastes, the scholarly disposition, and the literary sympathies which would confirm the regard of his people to him, and could hardly fail to quicken their own intellectual life.1 . . . "The native-born New Englanders were less instructed than the patriarchs, men of liberal education and wise counsel, who had come from the Old World. They were farther from the sources of enlarged understanding and liberal culture. They were no longer borne onward by the deeper currents of the life of the world. They had become provincial. Their minds had narrowed to their fortunes; their intellectual interests were scanty. Books were few; in many households the Bible was the only one. Even the Minister's library was but poorly supplied, and its shelves were for the most part loaded with treatises on controversial theology.

1 Of Mrs. Anne Bradstreet, Norton wrote at another time: "It struck me that there would be something of quaint appropriateness in my writing, at this long interval, in regard to her whose praises he [John Norton] had sung, and that the act would not be without a certain piety toward my ancestor. And, further, I reflected, that as I could trace my descent in one line directly from Governor Thomas Dudley, the father of Mrs. Bradstreet, and as portraits of her brother Governor Joseph Dudley, and his wife, looked down on me every day while I sat at breakfast and dinner, she, as my Aunt many times removed, might not unjustly have a claim upon me for such token of respect to her memory as had been asked of me. . . . She cherished in herself and in her children the things of the mind and of the spirit; and if such memory as her verses have secured for her depend rather on the circumstance of a woman's writing them at the time when she did, and in the place where she lived, than upon their poetic worth, it is a memory honourable to her, and it happily preserves the name of a good woman, among whose descendants has been more than one poet whose verses reflect lustre on her own. (Through one of her children she is the ancestress of Richard Henry Dana; through another, of Oliver Wendell Holmes.)" See Poems of Mrs. Anne Bradstreet, with an introduction by Charles Eliot Norton; The Duodecimos, 1897.

The resources of English literature were unknown. Some of the chief glories of literature were prohibited. Shakespeare was a playwright, the minister of corruption. For a century after the settlement of New England I find no evidence that there was a copy of Shakespeare in the colonies. Pioneers and farmers have little leisure, and less inclination to read. There were no newspapers. There were no means, by regular communications from distant places, of diverting or enlarging the thoughts. The horizon of ideas was as limited as the horizon of the landscape.

"But the intelligence-stunted, starved as it might be-sought and found nourishment for itself, not altogether healthy, in one important source. Religion became the absorbing and permanent intellectual concern. It partook of the dryness of the intellectual life outside of it, but it served to keep alive the minds of men. The system of theology then generally accepted was one of the most complex and elaborate bodies of doctrine that has ever been devised by the ingenuity of subtle and vigorous thinkers in the attempt to frame a creed that should account for the existence of the universe, the nature of the Creator, and the destiny of man. Based upon the assumption of the absolute authority of the Scriptures, of the Old not less than the New Testament, as the Word of God, and their complete sufficiency as a theory of the universe and a guide to conduct, the creed attempted to embody the doctrines essential to salvation in a series of mutually dependent logical propositions. In its practical application to life it was probably the most artificial and the

most oppressive creed that has ever exerted a lasting influence upon a civilized Christian community. The fallen nature of man through sin, the enmity of God toward the human beings he had created, the responsibility of man and his helplessness to free himself from the curse denounced upon him, the damnation of infants, the eternal duration of the torments of hell to which the vast majority of mankind were doomed, weighed with unrelieved gloom upon the soul. There was nothing to break the force of the tyranny exercised in the name of religion over the spirits of the men and women and children in these regions. There was no delivery from it. The strong were subdued, the weak were crushed by it. In his Diary, under date of January 13, 1695/6, Judge Sewall makes this entry concerning his little daughter Betty, a girl of fourteen:

"When I came in, past 7. at night, my wife met me in the Entry and told me Betty had surprised them. I was surprised with the abruptness of the Relation. It seems Betty Sewall had given some signs of dejection and sorrow; but a little after diñer she burst out into an amazing cry, which caus'd all the family to cry too; Her Mother ask'd the reason; she gave none; at last said she was afraid she should goe to Hell, her Sins were not pardon'd. She was first wounded by my reading a Sermon of Mr. Norton's, about the 5th of Jan. Text Jn° 7. 34, Ye shall seek me and shall not find me. And those words in the Sermon, Jn° 8. 21. Ye shall seek me and shall die in your sins, ran in her mind and terrified her greatly. And staying at home Jan. 12, she read out of Mr. Cotton Mather - Why Hath Satan

filled thy heart, which increas'd her fear. Her Mother ask'd her whether she pray'd. She answer'd, Yes; but feared her prayers were not heard because her Sins not pardon'd. Mr. Willard [the minister] though sent for timelyer... came not till after I came home. He discoursed with Betty who could not give a distinct account, but was confused as his phrase was, and as had experienced in himself. Mr. Willard pray'd excellently. The Lord bring light and Comfort out of this dark and dreadful Cloud, and Grant that Christ's being formed in my dear child, may be the issue of these painfull pangs.'

"Such a domestic picture, impressive as it is, is but a feeble illustration of deeper unrecorded agonies.

"The gentlest preacher must deliver from the pulpit the harsh teaching of his creed. Mr. Norton is reported to have been of a mild spirit, and to have possessed an amiable disposition, but there is no reason to suppose that he failed in orthodoxy or softened the stern features of Calvinistic doctrine." 1

Beyond the facts thus brought together, little is known concerning the young scholar who grew old in his calling, and whose pastorate in Hingham was nearly

1 "Only one of his sermons during his long pastorate of thirty-seven years was printed. It was an Election Sermon delivered on May 26, 1708. 'Such an occasion,' says Hawthorne, 'formed an honorable epoch in the life of a New England clergyman.' Sewall's entry in his Diary concerning the sermon is amusing and instructive: ‘Midweek, May 26, 1708. Mr. Jno. Norton preaches a Flattering Sermon as to the Governour.' 'May 27. I was with a Comittee in the morn, . . . and so by God's good providence absent when Mr. Corwin and Cushing were order'd to Thank Mr. Norton for his sermon and desire a Copy.' The sermon, printed under the title of An Essay tending to promote Education, contains some praise of Governor Dudley which was naturally distasteful to the Judge, who stood in manful opposition to Dudley's policy; but it is in other respects a creditable dis