Death In such extravagant ways have these Wretches propounded, the Dragooning of as many as they can, into their own Combination, and the Destroying of others, with lingring, spreading, deadly diseases; till our Country should at last become too hot for us. Among the Ghastly Instances of the success which those Bloody Witches have had, we have seen even some of their own Children, so dedicated unto the Devil, that in their Infancy, it is found, the Imps have sucked them, and rendered them Venomous to a Prodigy. We have also seen the Devil's first battries upon the Town where the first Church of our Lord in this Colony was gathered, producing those distractions, which have almost ruin'd the Town. We have seen, likewise, the Plague reaching afterwards into the Towns far and near, where the Houses of good Meu have the Devils filling of them with terrible vexations! This is the descent, which, it seems, the devil has now made upon us. But that which makes this descent the more formidable, is, The multitude and quality of Persons accused of an interest in this Witcheraft, by the Efficacy of the Spectres which take their name and shape upon them; causing very many good and wise men to fear, that many innocent, yea, and some virtuous persons, are, by the devils in this matter, imposed upon; that the devils have obtain'd the power to take on them the likeness of harmless people, and in that likeness to afflict other people, and be so abused by Præstigious Demous, that upon their look or touch, the afflicted shall be oddly affected. Arguments from the Providence of God, on the one side, and from our charity towards man on the other side, have made this now to become a most agitated Controversie among us. There is an Agony produced in the Minds of Men, lest the Devil should sham us with Devices, of perhaps a finer Thread, than was ever yet practised upon the World. The whole business is become hereupon so Snarled, and the determination of the Question one way or another, so dismal, that our Honourable Judges have a Room for Jehosaphat's Exclamation, We know not what to do! They have used, as Judges have heretofore done, the Spectral Evidences, to introduce their further Enquiries into the Lives of the persons accused; and they have thereupon, by the wonderful Providence of God, been so strengthened with other evidences, that some of the Witch Gang have been fairly Executed. But what shall be done, as to those against whom the evidence is chiefly founded in the dark world? Here they do solemnly demand our Addresses to the Father of Lights, on their behalf. But in the mean time, the Devil improves the Darkness of this Affair, to push us into a Blind Man's Buffet, and we are even ready to be sinfully, yea, hotly and madly, mauling one another in the dark. THE TARANTULA.-FROM THE "CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHER." What amazing effects follow on the bite of the tarantula! the patient is taken with an extreme difficulty of breathing, and heavy anguish of heart, a dismal sadness of mind, a voice querulous and sor rowful, and his eyes very much disturbed. When the violent symptoms which appear on the first day are over, a continual melancholy hangs about the person, till by dancing or singing, or change of air, the poisonous impressions are extirpated from the blood, and the fluid of the nerves; but this is a happiness that rarely happens; nay, Baglivi, this wicked spider's countryman, says, there is no expectation of ever being perfectly cured. Many of the poisoned are never well but among the graves, and in solitary places; and they lay themselves along VOL. 1-5 upon a bier as if they themselves were dead: like people in despair, they will throw themselves into a pit; women, otherwise chaste enough, cast away all modesty, and throw themselves into every indecent posture. There are some colours agreeable to them, others offensive, especially black; and if the attendants have their clothes of ungrateful colours, they must retire out of their sight. The music with the dancing which must be employed for their cure, continues three or four days; in this vigorous exercise they sigh, they are full of complaints; like persons in drink, they almost lose the right use of their understanding; they distinguish not their very parents from others in their treating of them, and scarce remember any thing that is past. Some during this exercise are much pleased with green boughs of reeds or vines, and wave them with their hands in the air, or dip them in the water, or bind them about their face or neck; others love to handle red cloths or naked swords. there are those who, upon a little intermission of the dancing, fall a digging of holes in the ground, which they fill with water, and then take a strange satisfaction in rolling there. When they begin to dance, they call for swords and act like fencers; sometimes they are for a looking-glass, but then they fetch many a deep sigh at beholding themselves. Their fancy sometimes leads them to rich clothes, to necklaces, to fineries and a variety of ornaments; and they are highly courteous to the bystanders that will gratify them with any of these things; they lay them very orderly about the place where the exercise is pursued, and in dancing please themselves with one or other of these things by turns, as their troubled imagination directs them. And How miserable would be the condition of mankind, if these animals were common in every country! But our compassionate God has confined them to one little corner of Italy; they are existing elsewhere, but nowhere thus venomous, except in Apulia. My God, I glorify thy compassion to sinful mankind, in thy restraints upon the poisons of the tarantula THE LIFE OF MR. RALPHI PARTRIDGE-FROM THE "MAGNALIA." When David was driven from his friends into the wilderness, he made this pathetical representation of his condition, ""Twas as when one doth hunt a partridge in the mountains" Among the many wor thy persons who were persecuted into an American wilderness, for their fidelity to the ecclesiastical kingdom of our true David, there was one that bore the name as well as the state of an hunted partridgeWhat befel him, was, as Bede saith of what was done by Felix, Juxta nominis sui Sacramentum. This was Mr. Ralph Partridge, who for no fault but the delicacy of his good spirit, being distressed by the ecclesiastical setters, had no defence, neither of beak nor claw, but a flight over the ocean. The place where he took covert was the-colony of Plymouth, and the town of Duxbury in that colony. This Partridge had not only the innocency of the dove, conspicuous in his blameless and pious life, which made him very acceptable in his conversation, but also the loftiness of an eagle, in the great soar of his intellectual abilities. There are some interpret ers who, understanding church officers by the living creatures, in the fourth chapter of the Apocalypse, will have the teacher to be intended by the eagle there, for his quick insight into remote and hidden things The church of Duxbury had such an eagle in their Partridge, when they enjoyed such a teacher. By the same token, when the Platform of Church Discipline was to be composed, the Synod at Cam bridge appointed three persons to draw up each of them, "a model of church-government, according to the word of God," unto the end that out of those the synod might form what should be found most agreeable; which three persons were Mr. Cotton, and Mr. Mather, and Mr. Partridge. So that, in the opinion of that reverend assembly, this person did not come far behind the first two for some of his accomplish ments. After he had been forty years a faithful and painful preacher of the gospel, rarely, if ever, in all that while interrupted in his work by any bodily sickness, he died in a good old age, about the year 1658. There was one singular instance of a weaned spirit, whereby he signalized himself unto the churches of God. That was this: there was a time when most of the ministers in the colony of Plymouth left the colony, upon the discouragement which the want of a competent maintenance among the needy and froward inhabitants gave unto them. Nevertheless Mr. Partridge was, notwithstanding the paucity and the poverty of his congregation, so afraid of being anything that looked like a bird wandering from his nest, that he remained with his poor people till he took wing to become a bird of paradise, along with the winged seraphim of heaven. EPITAPHIUM. Avolarit MINISTRY OF ANGELS-FROM "CŒLESTINUS," When the Angel of the Lord encamps round about those that fear Him, the next news is, They that seek the Lord shall want nothing that is good for them. O servant of God, art thou afraid of wants, of straits, of difficulties? The angels who poured down at least 250,000 bushels of manna day by day unto the followers of God in the wilderness; the angel that brought meat unto the Prophet; the angel that showed Hagar and her son how to supply themselves; who can tell what services they may do for thee! Art thou in danger by sicknesses? The angel who strengthened the feeble Daniel, the angel who impregnated the waters of Bethesda with such sanative and balsamic virtues; who can tell what services they may do for thee! Art thou in danger from enemies? The angel who rescued Jacob from Laban and from Esau; the angel who fetched Peter out of prison, who can tell what services they may do for thee! The angels which directed the Patri arch in his journeys, may give a direction to thy steps, when thou art at a loss how to steer. The angels who moved the Philistines to dismiss David; the angels who carried Lot out of Sodom; the angels who would not let the lions fall upon Daniel, they are still ready to do as much for thee, when God thy Saviour shall see it seasonable. And who can tell what services the angels of God may do for the servants of God, when their dying hour is coming upon them; then to make their bed for them, then to make all things easy to them. When we are in our agonies, then for an angel to come and strengthen us! The holy angels, who have stood by us all our life, will not forsake us at our death. It was the last word of a Divine, dying in this, but famous in other countries; O you holy angels, come, do your office. Tis a blessed office, indeed, which our Saviour sends his holy angels to do for us in a dying hour. At our dissolution they will attend us, they will befriend us, they will receive us, they will do inconceivable things as a convoy for us, to set us before the presence of our Saviour with exceeding joy. O believer, why art thou so afraid of dying? What! afraid of coming into the loving and the lovely hands of the holy angels! Afraid of going from the caverns of the earth, which are full of brutish people, and where thy moan was, My soul is among lions, and I lie among them that are set on fire, even among the sons of men; and afraid of going to dwell among those amiable spirits, who have rejoiced in all the good they ever saw done unto thee; who have rejoiced in being sent by thy God and theirs, times without number, to do good unto thee; who have rejoiced in the hopes of having thee to be with them, and now have what they hoped for by having thee associated with them in the satisfactions of the heavenly world! Certainly, thou wilt not be afraid of going to those, whom thou hast already had so sweet a conversation with. It was a good Memento written on the door of a study that had much of Heaven in it: ANGELI ASTANT; there are Holy Angels at hand. ON THE DEATH OF HIS SON. The motto inscribed on his gravestone, “Reserved for a glori- The exhortation of the Lord, We must remember speaking thus: Faint not rebuked under them. Correct the children of his love; The vexed flesh will grievous call, ON THE DEATH OF HIS DAUGHTER. Himself an offering once for me: I see my best enjoyments here, Vain smoke, they prick and leave our eyes. That when I seem to lose these toys, I do believe, that I and mine, Shall come to everlasting rest; Of mine, which to the ground shall fall, From whom thou nothing dost withhold! BENJAMIN TOMPSON. BENJAMIN TOMPSON, "learned schoolmaster and physician, and y renowned poet of New Eng land," according to the culogistic language of his tombstone, was born in 1640, and graduated at Harvard in 1002. He was master of the public school in Boston from 1667 to 1670, when he received a call and removed to Cambridge. Ile died April 13, 1714, and is buried at Roxbury.* He was the author of an Elegy on the Rev. Samuel Whiting of Lynn, who died December 11, 1679, which is printed in the Magnalia. He also figures in the same volume among the rhyming eulogists at its commencement, where he turns a compliment with some skill. Quod patrios Manes revocasti a sedibus altis, In liveries of glory most divine. When ancient names I in thy pages met, His chief production is a poem entitled New England's Crisis. The piece, after an eulogy on certain patriotic women, who turned out to build a wall for the defence of the town, gives a comparison between old times and new in the colony, in which he assigns the palin, as usual in such discussions, at least in poetry, to the days gone by; and then passes to King Philip's war, with which the remainder is occupied. ON A FORTIFICATION AT BOSTON BEGUN BY WOMEN. Dux fœmina fucti. A grand attempt some Amazonian Dames THE PROLOGUE. The times wherein old Pompion was a saint, Kettell's Specimens of American Poetry, Vol. 1. xxxvii. Under thatch'd hutts without the cry of rent, Good morrow, brother, is there aught you want? 'T was ere the neighbouring Virgin-Land had broke But valour snib'd it. Then were men of worth Dear love, sound truth, they were our grand protection, Then were the times in which our councells sate, So that the mirror of the christian world OUR FOREFATHERS' SONG. THIS song is stated in the Massachusetts Historical Collections to have been "taken memoriter, in 1785, from the lips of an old lady at the advanced period of 96." It is also found in the Massachusetts Magazine for January, 1791. Both copies are identical. It is of an early date, and has been carried back to the year 1630. Four lines in the stanza before the last appear missing. New England's annoyances you that would know them, Pray ponder these verses which briefly doth shew them. The place where we live is a wilderness wood, Where grass is much wanting that's fruitful and good: Our mountains and hills and our vallies below, But when the Spring opens we then take the hoe, If fresh meat be wanting, to fill up our dish, We repair to the clam-banks, and there we catch fish. Instead of pottage and puddings, and custards and pies, Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies; We have pumpkins at morning, and pumpkins at noon, If it was not for pumpkins we should be undone. If barley he wanting to make into malt, Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut tree chipa Now while some are going let others be coming, THOMAS MAKIN. THOMAS MAKIN was the author of two Latin poems addressed to James Logan, and found. among his papers after his death; they are entitled, Encomium Pennsylcaniæ, and In laudes Pennsylraniæ poema, sen descriptio Pennsylvania, and bear date in 1728 and 1729. The second is "principally retained," as he phrases it, by Robert Proud, who adds an English translation by himself, in his History of Pennsylvania. Makin was an usher under George Keith, in 1689, in the Friends' Public Grammar School in Philadel phia, and succeeded him as principal in the following year. He was frequently chosen clerk of the Provincial Assembly, but his school not proving productive, he removed to the interior.t His verses describing the features of town and country appear to have been written for amusement, and belong to the curiosities of literature. We give a brief passage of both the rural and city descriptions. Hic avis est quædam dulci celeberrima voce, Hic avis est quædam rubro formosa colore, Hic et aves aliæ, quotquot generantur ab ovis, In cymbas ingens præda aliquando cadit. Tis here the mocking bird extends his throat, George Keith, celebrated both as an advocate and opponent of the Quakers was born in Aberdeen, and came to East Jersey in 1682, where he was appointed surveyor-general. He was, as we have seen, at the head of a school in Philadelphia in 1659. In 1891, after having made a propagandist tour in New England, be left the sect with a few followers, the Fcceders calling themselves Christian Quakers. He not long after took orders in the Church of England, officiated about a year in New York and Boston, and travelled through the Fettlements as a missionary. He returned to England in 1706, and passed the remainder of his life as rector of Edburton in Sussex. He published in 1706 a Journal of Travels from New Hampshire to Caratuck, which was reprinted in 1852 by the Protestant Episcopal Historical Society, in the first volume of their Collections, and a number of controversial works, which were not deficient in energy. + Proud's History, 11. 861. Some Account of the Early Poets and Poetry of Pennsylvania, by Joshua Francis Fisher. Penn. Hist. Soc. Coll, vol. il, pt. 8, p. 78. Its motion quick seems to elude the eye; It now a bird appears, and now a fly. The various woodpeckers here charm the sight; But where more scarce, 'tis more esteemed and dear, Que parva emieuit tempore magna brevi. Et domui recto est ordine juncta domus Elevet hoc hominum mentes, et mulceat aures, Five houses here for sacred use are known, JOHN JOSSELYN. THE first mention we have of John Josselyn is from his own words, that he set sail for New England April 26, and arrived at Boston on the 3d of July, 1638. Here he "presented his respects to Mr. Winthrop the governor, and to Mr. Cotton the teacher of Boston church, to whom he delivered, from Mr. Francis Quarles the poet, the translation of the 16, 25, 51, 88, 113, and 137 Psalms into English meter.' He returned to England in October of the following year. A And Heaven to seas descended: no star shown; Art stood amaz'd in ambiguity. He thus cominences the recital of his second voyage. I have heard of a certain merchant in the west of England, who after many great losses, walking upon the sea bank in a calm sun-shining day; observing the smoothness of the sea, coming in with a chequered or dimpled wave: Ah (quoth he) thou flattering element, many a time hast thou inticed me to throw myself and my fortunes into thy arms; but thou hast hitherto proved treacherous; thinking to find thee a mother of increase, I have found thee to be the mother of mischief and wickedness; yea the father of prodigies; therefore, being now secure, I will trust thee no more. But mark this man's reso lution a while after, periculum maris spes lucri superat. So fared it with me, that having escaped the dangers of one voyage, must needs put on a resolution for a second, wherein I plowed many a churlish billow with little or no advantage, but rather to my loss and detriment. In the setting down whereof I propose not to insist in a methodical way, but according to my quality, in a plain and brief relation as I have done already; for I perceive, if I used all the art that possibly I could, it would be difficult to please all, for all men's eyes, ears, faith, and judgments are not of a size. There be a sort of stagnant stinking spirits, who, like flies, lie sucking at the botches of carnal pleasures, and never travelled so much sen as is between Heth ferry and Lyon Key; yet notwithstanding (sitting in the chair of the scornful over their whists and draughts of intoxication) I will desperately censure the relations of the greatest travellers. It was a good proviso of a learned man, never to report wonders, for in so doing of the greatest he will be sure not to be believed, but laughed at, which certainly bewrays their ignorance and want of discretion. Of fools and madmen then I shall take no care, I will not invite these in the least to honour me with a glance from their supercilious eyes; but rather advise them to keep their inspection for their fine tongu'd romances and plays. This homely piece, I protest ingenuously, is prepared for such only who well know how to make use of their charitable constructions towards works of this nature, to whom I submit myself in all my faculties, and proceed in my second voyage. He sailed May 23d, 1663, and returned December 1, 1671-the interval of eight and a half years having been passed in New England. He published, the year after his return, New England's Rarities Discovered. In it he gives us a New England's Rarities Discovered in Birds, Beasts, Fishes Serpents, and Plants of that Country; Together with the Physical and Chyrurgical Remedies wherewith the Na tives constantly use to cure their Distempera, Wounds, and Sores. Also a Perfect Description of an Indian Bque, in all |