they could not but have known all that
was going on.

Cotton Mather's "_journeys to Salem_," must have been frequent. If only
made two or three times, he would have said so, as he speaks of them in
an apologetic passage and when trying to represent his agency to have
been as little as the truth would allow.

The Reviewer states that the journeys were made for another purpose. He
states it positively and absolutely. "He made visits to Salem, as we
shall presently see, for quite another purpose than that which has been
alleged." This language surprised me, as it had wholly escaped my
researches; and the surprise was accompanied with pleasure, for I
supposed there must be some foundation for the declaration. I looked
eagerly for the disclosure about to be made, in some document, now, for
the first time, to be brought to light, from "original sources," such
as he, in a subsequent passage, informs us, Mr. Longfellow has had
access to. Great was my disappointment, to find that the Reviewer,
notwithstanding his promise to let us know the "other purpose" of
Mather's visits to Salem, has not given us a single syllable of
_information_ to that effect, but has endeavored to palm off, upon the
readers of the _North American Review_, a pure fiction of his own brain,
a mere conjecture, as baseless as it is absurd. He says that Mather made
his visits to Salem, as the "spiritual comforter" of John Proctor and
John Willard!

He further says, in support of this statement, "that Proctor and Willard
had been confined several months in the Boston Jail, and there,
doubtless, made Mr. Mather's acquaintance, as he was an habitual visitor
of the prison." This hardly accounts for "journeys to Salem," during
_those_ months. Salem was not exactly in Mr. Mather's way from his house
in Boston to the Jail in Boston.

As only a few days over four months elapsed between Proctor's being put
into the Boston Jail and his execution, deducting the "several months"
he spent there, but little time remained, after his transfer to the
Salem Jail, for Mather's "journeys to Salem," for the purpose of
administering spiritual consolation to him. So far as making his
"acquaintance," while in Boston Jail is regarded, upon the same ground
it might be affirmed that he was the spiritual adviser of the Prisoners
generally; for most of those, who suffered, were in Boston Jail as long
as Proctor; and he visited them all alike.

The Reviewer adduces not a particle of