ordinarily] close
confinement for a purer atmosphere." (pp. xxii.-xxiii.) Again, (p.
xxii.,) "He had, in this manner, for six years, pursued, with very great
success, the objects of his mission, when these were abruptly terminated
by his foul betrayal into the hands of his enemies in 1592." We should
like to have Mr. Turnbull explain how the _objects_ of a mission could
be terminated by a betrayal, however it might be with the mission
itself. From the many similar flowers in the Introduction to Mather's
"Providences," by Mr. George Offor, (in whom, we fear, we recognize
a countryman,) we select the following: "It was at this period when,
[that,] oppressed by the ruthless hand of persecution, our pilgrim
fathers, threatened with torture and death, succumbed not to man, but
trusting on [in] an almighty arm, braved the dangers of an almost
unknown ocean, and threw themselves into the arms of men called savages,
who proved more beneficent than national Christians." To whom or what
our pilgrim fathers _did_ succumb, and what "national Christians" are,
we leave, with the song of the Sirens, to conjecture. Speaking of the
"Providences," Mr. Offor says, that "they faithfully delineate the state
of public opinion two hundred years ago, the most striking feature being
an implicit faith in the power of the [in-]visible world to hold visible
intercourse with man:--not the angels to bless poor erring mortals, but
of demons imparting power to witches and warlocks to injure, terrify and
destroy,"--a sentence which we defy any witch or warlock, though he
were Michael Scott himself, to parse with the astutest demonic aid.
On another page, he says of Dr. Mather, that "he was one of the first
divines who discovered that very many strange events, which were
considered preternatural, had occurred in the course of nature or by
deceitful juggling; that the Devil could not speak English, nor prevail
with Protestants; the smell of herbs alarms the Devil; that medicine
drives out Satan!" We do not wonder that Mr. Offor put a mark of
exclamation at the end of this surprising sentence, but we do confess
our astonishment that the vermilion pencil of the proof-reader suffered
it to pass unchallenged. Leaving its bad English out of the question,
we find, on referring to Mather's text, that he was never guilty of the
absurdity of believing that Satan was less eloquent in English than
in any other language; that it was the British (Welsh) tongue which a