Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 35.djvu/26

16 . A man of the highest character, in view of what he supposed the teachings of Scripture and the principles laid down by the great English judges, he had unhesitatingly condemned the accused; but reason now dawned upon him. He looked back and saw the baselessness of the whole proceedings, and made a public statement of his errors. His diary contains many passages showing deep contrition, and ever afterward, to the end of his life, he was wont, on one day in the year, to enter into solitude, and there remain all the day long in fasting, prayer, and penitence.

Chief-Justice Stoughton never yielded. To the last he lamented the "evil spirit of unbelief" which was thwarting the glorious work of freeing New England from demons.

The church of Salem solemnly revoked the excommunications of the condemned and drove Mr. Parris from their pastorate. Cotton Mather passed his last years in groaning over the decline of the faith and the ingratitude of a people for whom he had done so much. Very significant is one of his complaints, since it shows the evolution of a more scientific mode of thought abroad as well as at home: he laments in his diary that English publishers gladly printed Calef's book against witchcraft and possession, but would no longer publish his own, and he declares this "an attack upon the glory of the Lord."



N the reproduction of the beautiful. Art has occupied itself chiefly with form and color, and has seldom made more serious demands upon light than to ask enough of it to reflect its achievements in these two directions to the eye of the beholder. So keen is the pleasure derived from well-adjusted proportions that our statuary and architecture please by their appeal to this one sentiment alone. When color joins with represented form, our delight in these harmonies is sufficiently complete to exclude for the time any sense of deficiency. We believe ourselves to be quite satisfied.

And yet, when we turn from these clever reproductions to the veritable nature of the outward world, or of our own unmaterialized fancies, our copies seem poor things after all. At best, they are so inadequate that one almost feels that the attempt is a mistake. The marble figure lacks the divine life that suffused and made adorable the human original. The painted atmosphere has 