is, and his father's, and the false principles,
and frightful stories, that filled the people's minds with great fears
and dangerous notions."

Our own Hutchinson, in his _History of Massachusetts_, [_II., 25-27_]
alludes to the excitement of the public mind, occasioned by the case of
the Goodwin children. "I have often," he says, "heard persons who were
of the neighborhood, speak of the great consternation it occasioned."

In citing this author, in the present discussion, certain facts are
always to be borne in mind. One of his sisters was the wife of Cotton
Mather's son, towards whom Hutchinson cherished sentiments appropriate
to such a near connection, and of which Samuel Mather was, there is no
reason to doubt, worthy. In the Preface to his first volume he speaks
thus: "I am obliged to no other person more than to my friend and
brother, the Reverend Mr. Mather, whose library has been open to me, as
it had been before to the Reverend Mr. Prince, who has taken from thence
the greatest and most valuable part of what he had collected."

Moreover, this very library was, it can hardly be questioned, that of
Cotton Mather; of which, in his Diary, he speaks as "very great." In an
interesting article, to which I may refer again, in the _Collections of
the Massachusetts Historical Society_, [_IV., ii., 128_], we are told
that, in the inventory of the estate of Cotton Mather, filed by his
Administrator, "not a single book is mentioned among the assets of this
eccentric scholar." He had, it is to be presumed, given them all, in his
life-time, to his son, who succeeded to his ministry in the North
Church, in 1732.

When the delicacy of his relation to the Mather family and the benefit
he was deriving from that library are considered, the avoidance, by
Hutchinson, of any unpleasant reference to Cotton Mather, by name, is
honorable to his feelings. But he maintained, nevertheless, a faithful
allegiance to the truth of history, as the following, as well as many
other passages, in his invaluable work, strikingly show. They prove that
he regarded Mather's "printed account" of the case of the Goodwin
children, as having a very important relation to the immediately
subsequent delusion in Salem. "The eldest was taken," he says, "into a
Minister's family, where at first she behaved orderly, but after some
time suddenly fell into her fits." "The account of her sufferings is in
print; some things are mentioned as extraordinary, which tu