a protestant inquisitor, who went to struggle against Nature, only to escape the religious tyranny of Europe, would make us quake to-day, estimable as he was. Armed, in his turn, with fire and sword to smite all heretics, wizards, and witches, this martyr of Catholic or Anglican persecution, became, as soon as he found himself free, a fearful persecutor. The first epoch of American civilization is full of his cruelties. The principal types are the famous Increase Mather, and his son Cotton, two figures colder than Calvin and bloodier than Knox. The first Colonists coarse, violent, fierce and austere, of implacable severity, pushed credulity and fanaticism to the extremity of barbarity. Honest they were, serious, sincere, manly; they could fight against savages, cold, hunger, distress, if need be, against the very Devil; indeed, they had a peculiar taste for a combat with that personage. If they did not discover him on their way, they went in search of him, and frequently gave themselves the pleasure of burning a witch. Yet they did not destroy American Society, they founded it. Fanaticism is the exaggeration of Faith, but not its poison; a formidable astringent, it proves the social vitality of which it is the excess and the abuse. The old municipal registers of some of the towns in Massachusetts, between 1640 and 1680 have been reprinted. "Jane Edwards is to be imprisoned for having pressed Jonathan Williams' hand.-The little Johnson shall have thirty stripes and be put on bread and water, for sleeping in church. Mary Merivale shall do public penance, bare-footed, for pronouncing the name of God without respect."-As for witch histories, they abound from the beginning and recall the history of Urbain Grandier and the possessed of Loudon. "Between 1688 and 1692" says a chronicler, we had in Boston a fearful and singular example of the wiles of the demon. In a respectable family, four young children, the eldest a girl of thirteen, and the youngest a boy of nine, were attacked with demoniacal convulsions, which presented all the symptoms given by the best writers upon the subject. These children complained of being bitten, pinched and tortured by invisible beings; they barked like dogs and miaouled like cats. The frightened father hastened to send for Dr. Oaks, a renowned theologian, and a great physician of souls, who declared that the children were possessed. An old Irish woman, a servant in the house, was denounced as a witch by the eldest sister, who had' quarrelled with her; the other children confirmed the testimony of their sister. The four ministers of Boston, and the one of Charlestown, met in the house and made long prayers, by which the youngest boy found himself considerably soothed. The others persisted and the Irish woman was imprisoned. Being asked if she was a sorceress, she replied "she flattered herself that she was. As she was very poor and of lowly estate, she fancied that her relations with the demon would procure her some credit. She was hanged. This occurred during the voyage of Increase Mather to London whither he had gone to ask aid for the colony; he had left behind him a worthy son, Cotton Mather, aged twenty-five, as ardent as his father in pursuit of the demon. He took an active part in the execution of the Irish woman, and then desiring to examine more closely the diabolical operations, he caused the eldest girl to be taken to his house, where he lodged her, watched all her actions, followed all her motions, and wrote a journal about her which still exists, printed, under the title of "Memorable Providences manifested on the subject of possession and sorcery." In a special document, joined to this work, the four ministers attest the truth of all therein contained, and Cotton adds a thundering preface, wherein he does not fail to uplift himself against those Sadducees who will not believe in the Devil, and are consequently Atheists. The book was reprinted in London, with a preface by the worthy Baxter. For fifty years, an epidemic of demoniac possessions vexed Massachusetts. Four years after the young girl, retired into private life, had ceased to be the object of popular curiosity; the whole village of Salem was possessed. Curious scenes took place in the church. Rival women arose and accused each other of sorcery in the temple itself. Many innocents perished, and the affair was only put a stop to by tortures. At the moment that these fierce ideas began to be softened, when the Christianity of these men, quitting this exalted fanaticism, became a more humane and prudent, even a finessing charity, in 1715, Franklin was nine years old. Activity was preserved, energy had not disappeared, the religious spirit existed in men's hearts, as powerful, and less sharp. Franklin and Washington, apostles of toleration, gentleness, and pacific activity, began to rise and grow in the midst of this reactionary movement, submitted to a new impulse. Franklin represents the second epoch which now expires, and which was signalized by the American independence. THE VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. A third era is commencing. Now that colonization, finished on the Atlantic sea-board, goes on triumphantly in the Valley of the Mississippi, and from the great northern lakes to Sierra Nevada, the new reaction manifests itself: it is an impulse towards enterprise, war, conquest. The old faith, in its rigor, has left few traces: activity has become extraordinarily energetic charity and concord have transformed themselves, little by little, into patriotism. the love of glory and of war break forth strongly. Still the Past lives in the Present, and the old Puritan germ is not dead. Nine tenths of the citizens of the United States are still Protestants: the Northern States preserve some Puritan sap; those of the South lean towards tolerance, towards Presbyterianism or towards Catholicism, of which the activity concentrates itself in the fertile Valley of the Mississippi. All the North, especially where the Mathers lived, dislikes the pacific element of this modified protestantism which is so general in southern and western cities, which is protected and favored by men of instruction, the capitalists, the whigs, or, as they may be called, the moderates or conservateurs. The new element of warlike enterprise, peculiar to democrats, to country-folk, to workmen, to the active, vehement mass, always eager to change the Present, mingles easily and well with the old Puritan element. Hence, that strange enterprise of the Mormons, who are trying to reconstitute, in the Rocky Mountains, the Biblical, patriarchal unity of power; and hence the sect of Millerites, Millenium people, who in their turn took refuge in the White Mountains. The Millerite and Mormon follies are marks of the alliance of the popular genius, with the old Puritan leaven. The Prophet Miller announced the end of the world for October 23, 1844; but as the event did not correspond with the prediction, he put it off until October 23, 1847. The popular masses of the North were shaken, and the fanatic movement extended as far as Philadelphia. Farmers neglected their labor, and public officers were appointed to rescue their "I trust harvests. In signing their receipts, they would say, that this is the last time." Concord, a little village of New Hampshire, was entirely drawn into the movement. Between Plymouth and Boston several proprietors sold their estates, and gave the money for the construction of a tabernacle wherein were to be gathered all the faithful, clad in white for their ascension. The Bostonians made a good affair of it. In many shop-windows you read, "White robes of every texture, size, and shape, for the ascension on the 23d." Some Methodist preachers and some journals encouraged this strange hallucination. Some New Yorkers passed the nights of the 23d and 24th awaiting the trumpet of the angel. A young girl, having received from her betrothed a precious necklace, desired to consecrate it to preparations for this ascension. Accordingly, she took it to a jeweller, to whom she revealed her motive. "Why," said he, "here are some silver spoons which I am now engraving for your minister; so that you see he does not believe in his own predictions." In the most public part of Boston they built a huge shantee, capable of holding two or three thousand persons. The edifice was about to fall, and the magistrates interfered and required them to build it more strongly. The crazy troup, passed the night in it in prayer, robed in white, and singing, I'm all in white; my soul is clear, The flower-decked room was lighted by seven-branched candlesticks, and hung with Hebrew texts. The night passed, the morning came, nobody "went up," and the society became bankrupt. The hall became a theatre, and Mr. Lyell was amused to hear there, Hecate singing in the play of Macbeth, |