work, _I carefully omitted_, from the body of it, the above
sentence, fearing that it might lead to misapprehension. For, although I
hold that the Mathers are pre-eminently answerable for the witchcraft
proceedings in their day, and may be said, justly, to have caused them,
of course I did not mean that, by personal instigation on the spot, they
started every occurrence that ultimately was made to assume such a
character. The Reviewer, with the fact well known to him, that I had
suppressed and discarded this clause, flings it against me, repeatedly.
He further quotes a portion of the paragraph, in the _Lectures_, in
which it occurs, omitting, _without indicating the omission_, certain
clauses that would have explained my meaning, _taking care, however, to
include the suppressed passage_; and finishes the misrepresentation, by
the following declaration, referring to the paragraph in the _Lectures_:
"The same statements, in almost the same words, he reproduces in his
History." This he says, knowing that the particular statement to which
he was then taking exception, was not reproduced in my History.

It may be as well here, at this point, as elsewhere, once for all, to
dispose of a large portion of the matter contained in the long article
in the _North American Review_, now under consideration. In preparing
any work, particularly in the department of history, it is to be
presumed that the explorations of the writer extend far beyond what he
may conclude to put into his book. He will find much that is of no
account whatever; that would load down his narrative, swell it to
inadmissible dimensions, and shed no additional light. Collateral and
incidental questions cannot be pursued in details. A new law, however,
is now given out, that must be followed, hereafter, by all writers--that
is, to give not a catalogue merely, but an account of the contents, of
every book and tract they have read. It is thus announced by our
Reviewer: "We assume Mr. Upham has not seen this tract, as he neither
mentioned it nor made use of its material."

The document here spoken of was designed to give Increase Mather's ideas
on the subject of witchcraft trials, written near the close of those in
Salem, in 1692. As I had no peculiar interest in determining what his
views were--as a careful study of the tract, particularly taken in
connection with its _Postscript_, fails to bring any reader to a clear
conception of them; and as its whole matter was a