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Rh little regarded by its former possessor that several leaves of it were torn out; but the remainder gave me such a turn of thinking as to have an influence on my conduct through life; for I have always set a greater value on the character of a doer of good than any other kind of reputation, and if I have been, as you seem to think, a useful citizen, the public owes the advantage of it to that book.&rdquo; He was systematic in his work, and over his study-door was the warning to all comers &ldquo;Be short.&rdquo; While he had considerably less to do with civil affairs than his father, yet it was his interposition, both oral and written, that saved Gov. Andros and his subalterns from being put to death by the people of Boston.

His literary life was perhaps more remarkable than that of any other American of his day. His prolific writing has been the cause of much diverse criticism. Dr. Charles Chauncy wrote: &ldquo;In regard to literature, or an acquaintance with books of all kinds, I give the palm to Cotton Mather. No native of this country had read so much, or retained more of what he read. He was the greatest redeemer of time I ever knew. There were scarcely any books written but he had, somehow or other, got the sight of them. His own library was the largest, by far, of any private one on the continent. . . . He knew more of the history of this country than any man in it; and, could he have conveyed his knowledge with proportionate judgment, he would have given the best history of it.&rdquo; His son Samuel writes: &ldquo;In two or three minutes' turning through a volume he could easily tell whether it would add to his stock of ideas. If it would not, he quickly laid it by. If otherwise, passing over those parts which contained the things he had known before, he perused those only which contained what was new.&rdquo; Of himself, Cotton Mather wrote: &ldquo;I am able, with little study, to write in seven languages. I feast myself with the sweets of all the sciences which the more polite part of mankind ordinarily pretend to. I am entertained with all kinds of histories, ancient and modern. I am no stranger to the curiosities which, by all sorts of learning, are brought to the curious. These intellectual pleasures are far beyond any sensual ones.&rdquo; Glasgow university gave him the degree of D. D. in 1710, and he was made a fellow of the Royal society in 1713, being the first American to receive this distinction. He had a very extensive correspondence with philosophers and literary men in all parts of the world and in various languages, but more especially with August Herman Francke, leader of the German Pietists and founder of the orphan house at Halle, for which he obtained many benefactions on both sides of the Atlantic. He also corresponded with Francke's pupils, and especially with those who became Danish missionaries at Tranque bar. He was an admirer of Father Jacques Bruyas, the French philologist, who prepared a dictionary and catechism for the Mohawk Indians; and at the very beginning of his &ldquo;Magnalia&rdquo; he quoted a short poem of Dominie Selyns, the Dutch pastor at New Amsterdam. And yet, in spite of a world-wide acquaintance, a cosmopolitan education, and most uncommon ability, his very best friends must concede that his judgment was ill-balanced, and that he was vain to the last degree.

He was active in the witchcraft persecutions. In 1685 he published &ldquo;Memorable Providences relating to Witchcraft and Possessions,&rdquo; and, when the children of John Goodwin became curiously affected in 1688, he was one of the four ministers of Boston who held a day of fasting and prayer,

and favored the suspicion of diabolical visitation. He afterward took the eldest daughter to his house in order to observe the phases of the phenomena. When the first phenomena occurred at Salem in 1692, he at once became a prominent adviser concerning them, and in order to convince all who doubted the possessions and disapproved of the executions, he wrote his &ldquo;Wonders of the Invisible World&rdquo; (London, 1692). When the reaction in the popular mind followed, he attempted to arrest it; and though he afterward admitted that &ldquo;there had been a going too far in that affair,&rdquo; he never expressed regret, and charged the responsibility upon the powers of darkness. His course in the matter has been the subject of much criticism, some of it unjust. The belief in witches had been world-wide for hundreds of years before he was born; thousands of such accused persons had been put to death in Germany, France, and Spain, and hundreds in England during the century before the date of his birth; and later, during the years of his youth, thousands of alleged witches were burned in England under the judicial administrations of Sir Matthew Hale and Chief-Justice Holt. It was therefore not strange that an intensely spiritual and trusting nature like that of Cotton Mather fell in with a belief that was shared by many who did not sympathize with him in other things. Among those who believed in the reality of witches were the president and fellows of Harvard, the French and Dutch ministers of the province of New York, and William Penn, in America, and Richard Baxter and Isaac Watts in England. Even so late as 1780 Sir William Blackstone declared a similar belief. It must be admitted that he did not rejoice at the earlier allegations; that he advised the separation of the accused and the use of milder measures; that when judicial proceedings had been determined upon he opposed the admission of the &ldquo;spectral,&rdquo; or any other, evidence resting on the authority of the devil; that though he protested to the judges against such evidence, yet he did not in the end think it his duty to abuse the judges in writing a history of the trials; and that, with his associates, he saw the measure of the delusion and ended it years before it was ended in England. The Rev. Chandler Robbins, in his history of the Second church, declares that he approached the discussion of Cotton Mather's character with much prejudice against him; but that a full investigation of the whole subject, and a due regard for the times in which he lived, led him (Robbins) to form a most favorable opinion. This analysis of Cotton Mather's character by Robbins is the most complete that has ever been attempted. Cotton Mather is buried in Copp's Hill burying-ground, in the older part of Boston. (See illustration.) The following inscription is on a slab: &ldquo;Reverend Drs. Increase, Cotton, and Samuel Mather were interred in this vault. 'Tis the tomb of our fathers, Mather's and Crocker's.&rdquo; Several years ago