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stay and dine with him, by which means I had the opportunity of hearing him Pray, and expound the Scriptures with his Family. After Dinner, he told me that both for my own, but especially for my Father's sake, whom he said he admir'd above most Men in England, if his Countenance and Recommendation cou'd be of any Service to me, I sho'd not want it: And I have already found the good Effects of it."

So favourably, indeed, were Dunton's books received that he was almost persuaded to take up his permanent residence in Boston. But while debating the matter, he was suddenly seized with a great desire to ramble back to London and once again behold his beloved Iris. So, leaving his good landlord Wilkins to collect the remittances still due him, he sailed for England, where he arrived early in August, 1686. His whole stay in America covered, therefore, but four months. One of his first acts, after being restored to the arms of his faithful wife, was to send his regards to Comfort Wilkins, with whom he had so often discoursed upon Platonic love, and his "service in a more particular manner to the Widow Brick." Already, he had let it be known that only the excellent health enjoyed by Iris prevented him from making actual love to this "flower of Boston."

His subsequent career was a bit checkered. A "ramble to Holland, where he lived four months," and up the Rhine, where he stayed, as he himself says, " until he had satisfied his curiosity and spent all his money," occupied the next two years. Then he took a shop opposite London's Poultry Counter which he opened the day the Prince of Orange entered the city. Here he sold books with varying success for ten years, publishing, the while, several semi-political pamphlets. The blow of his life came in May, 1697, in the death of Iris. But within twelvemonths he had married another woman,- for her fortune, and the last years of his life were full of squalid quarrels with this lady and with her mother.

Dunton's always-flowery style of composition seems to have grown more marked as time went on, and the Spectator found his effusions good matter for ridicule. One kind friend tried to tell him this. "If you have essays or letters that are valuable, call them essays and letters in short plain language," this common-sense person counselled," and if you have anything writ by men of sense and on subjects of importance, it may sell without your name to it."

But Dunton was now sixty and could not give up the old way. To the last his projects had

the catchword of Athenian appended to them. He died in obscurity in 1733, aged 74. If he had never come to Boston his name would long ago have been forgotten. Even as it is his "Letters " are almost unobtainable. For since the Prince Society of Boston reprinted a very limited edition, forty years ago, the volume has been growing every year more and more rare. To-day only collectors can boast of its possession.

IX

THE DYNASTY OF THE MATHERS

DUNTON'S letters abound, as we have seen, in references to the Mathers, Increase and Cotton; and the same thing is true of all the literature of the period. Brooks Adams has cuttingly observed in his remarkable volume, "The Emancipation of Massachusetts," that one weak point in the otherwise strong position of the early Massachusetts clergy was that the spirit of their age did not permit them to make their order hereditary. With the Mathers, however, the priesthood was hereditary, and they constituted a veritable dynasty in the government of Boston. The story of their lives offers a remarkable illustration of power otherwise transmitted - theological and

through at least four generations.

When" the shining light" was extinguished by death, late in 1652, he left a widow who became, before long, the second wife of the Reverend Richard Mather, minister of Dorchester.

This Mather had already a theologically minded son named Increase, who had been born in Dorchester in June, 1639, and who, after preaching his first sermon on his birthday, in 1657, sailed for England and pursued postgraduate studies in Trinity College there. Then he preached for one winter in Devonshire and, in 1659, became chaplain to the garrison of Guernsey. But the Restoration was now at hand and, finding that he must "either conform to the Revived Superstitions in the Church of England or leave the Island," he gave up his charge and, in June, 1661, sailed for home. The following winter he passed preaching alternately for his father and "to the New Church in the North-part of Boston." In the course of that year the charms of Mrs. Mather's daughter, Maria Cotton, impressed themselves upon him and,

"On March 6, 1662, he Came into the Married State; Espousing the only Daughter, of the celebrated Mr. John Cotton; in honor of whom he did. . . call his First-born son by the Name of COTTON."

Two years after his marriage Increase Mather was ordained pastor of the North Church in Boston and for some twenty years he appears to have performed with notable suc

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