“We all know that Britain knew nothing more famous than their ancient sect of DRUIDS; the philosophers, whose order, they say, was instituted by one Samothes, which is in English as much as to say, an heavenly man.  The Celtic name, Deru, for an Oak was that from whence they received their denomination; as at this very day the Welch call this tree Drew, and this order of men Derwyddon.  But there are no small antiquaries who derive this oaken religion and philosophy from the Oaks of Mamre, where the Patriarch Abraham had as well a dwelling as an altar.  That Oaken-Plain and the eminent OAK under which Abraham lodged was extant in the days of Constantine, as Isidore, Jerom, and Sozomen have assured us.  Yea, there are shrewd probabilities that Noah himself had lived in this very Oak-plain before him; for this very place was called Ogge [see Transcriber’s Note #1 at end of chapter], which was the name of Noah, so styled from the Oggyan (subcineritiis panibus) sacrifices, which he did use to offer in this renowned Grove.  And it was from this example that the ancients, and particularly that the Druids of the nations, chose oaken retirements for their studies.  Reader, let us now, upon another account, behold the students of Harvard College, as a rendezvous of happy Druids, under the influences of so rare a president.  But, alas! our joy must be short-lived, for on July 25, 1681, the stroke of a sudden death felled the tree,

  “Qui tantum inter caput extulit omnes
  Quantum lenta solent inter viberna cypressi.

“Mr. Oakes thus being transplanted into the better world the presidentship was immediately tendered unto Mr. Increase Mather.”

This will suffice as an example of the bad taste and laborious pedantry which disfigured Mather’s writing.  In its substance the book is a perfect thesaurus; and inasmuch as nothing is unimportant in the history of the beginnings of such a nation as this is and is destined to be, the Magnalia will always remain a valuable and interesting work.  Cotton Mather, born in 1663, was of the second generation of Americans, his grandfather being of the immigration, but his father a native of Dorchester, Mass.  A comparison of his writings and of the writings of his contemporaries with the works of Bradford, Winthrop, Hooker, and others of the original colonists, shows that the simple and heroic faith of the Pilgrims had hardened into formalism and doctrinal rigidity.  The leaders of the Puritan exodus, notwithstanding their intolerance of errors in belief, were comparatively broad-minded men.  They were sharers in a great national movement, and they came over when their cause was warm with the glow of martyrdom and on the eve of its coming triumph at home.  After the Restoration,