of Virginia" (1624); and "The True Travels" (1630). He died June 21, 1631, and was buried in St. Sepulchre's Church, London.

He has left us an admirable summary of his remarkable life: "Having been a slave to the Turks; prisoner among the most barbarous savages; after my deliverance commonly discovering and ranging those large rivers and unknown nations with such a handful of ignorant companions that the wiser sort often gave me up for lost; always in mutinies, wants, and miseries; blown up with gunpowder; a long time a prisoner among the French pirates, from whom escaping in a little boat by myself. . . . And many a score of the worst winter months have I lived in the fields; yet to have lived thirty-seven years in the midst of wars, pestilences, and famine, by which many a hundred thousand have died about me, and scarce five living of them that went first with me to Virginia, and yet to see the fruits of my labors thus well begin to prosper (though I have but my labor for my pains), have I not much reason, both privately and publicly, to acknowledge it, and give God thanks?"

After all necessary abatement is made in the account he has given of his life, it is apparent that he was no ordinary man. He was great in word and deed. His voluminous writings are characterized by clearness, force, and dramatic energy. His intellect was cast in the large mould of the era to which he belonged. He was a man of broad views. As a leader he displayed courage and executive ability; and few American explorers have shown the same indomitable energy. Though restless, ambitious, and vain, he was noble in aim and generous in disposition. During the first quarter of the seventeenth century "he did more than any other Englishman to make an American nation and an American literature possible."

COTTON MATHER.

AMONG the numerous writers of the first colonial era in New England, Cotton Mather stands as a kind of literary behemoth. In literary productiveness, though not in weighty character, he appears in the literature of the time with something of the hugeness that afterwards distinguished Samuel Johnson in England. His published writings reach the astonishing number of three hundred and eighty-three; and while many of them, it is true, are only pamphlets, there are also among them bulky volumes.

He was the third of a line of distinguished ancestors, the relative standing of whom is given in an old epitaph:

"Under this stone lies Richard Mather,
Who had a son greater than his father,

And eke a grandson greater than either."

:

This grandson was of course Cotton Mather, who was born Feb. 12, 1663, in Boston. On the side of his mother, who was a daughter of the celebrated pulpit-orator John Cotton, he likewise inherited talents of no usual order. After receiving his preparatory training in the free school of Boston, he entered Harvard College, at the age of twelve years, with superior attainments. During his collegiate course he was distinguished for his ability and scholarship; and at the time of his graduation, the president of the college, with a reference to his double line of illustrious ancestors, said in a Latin oration: "I trust that in this youth Cotton and Mather will be united and flourish again."

He may be regarded as a typical product of the Puritan culture of his time; and with this fact in mind, his life becomes

doubly interesting. He possessed a deeply religious nature, which asserted itself strongly even in his youth, and drove him to continual introspection. Troubled with doubts and fears about his salvation, he became serious in manner, and spent much time in prayer and fasting. At the same time he was active in doing good, instructing his brothers and sisters at home, and fearlessly reproving his companions for profanity or immorality.

After leaving college, Cotton Mather spent several years in teaching. But inheriting two great ecclesiastical names, it was but natural for him to think of the ministry. Unfortunately, he was embarrassed by a strongly marked impediment of speech; but upon the advice of a friend, accustoming himself to "dilated deliberation" in public speaking, he succeeded in overcoming this difficulty. He preached his first sermon at the age of seventeen, and a few months afterwards was called to North Church, the leading congregation in Boston, as associate of his father. His preaching was well received a fact about which, perhaps, he was unduly concerned. With his habit of dwelling upon his inward states of mind, he noted in his Diary (to which we are much indebted for an insight into his subjective life) a tendency to sinful pride, which he endeavored to suppress by the doubtful expedient of calling himself opprobrious names.

His method of sermonizing and preaching is well worth noting. It was the age of heroic sermons, the length of which was counted, not by minutes, but by hours. When he was at a loss for a text, "he would make a prayer to the Holy Spirit of Christ, as well to find a text for him as to handle it." But he was far from a lazy reliance upon divine aid. He carefully examined his text in the original language, and consulted the commentaries upon it. He very properly chose his subjects, not with a view to display his abilities, but to edify his hearers. Unlike his father, who laboriously committed his sermons to memory, he made use of extended notes, and thus gained both the finish of studied discourse, and the fervor of extemporaneous speaking.