would be a rare fund of humor, shrewdness, genius,
and originality. We must say, however, that as nothing is so difficult
as to collect these sparkling emanations of conversation, the written
record which this work presents falls far below that traditional one
which floated about us in our earlier years. So much in wit and humor
depends on the electric flash, the relation of the idea to the attendant
circumstances, that people often remember only _how_ they have laughed,
and can no more reproduce the expression than they can daguerreotype the
heat-lightning of a July night.

The doctrine that a minister is to maintain some ethereal, unearthly
station, where, wrapt in divine contemplation, he is to regard with
indifference the actual struggles and realities of life, is a sickly
species of sentimentalism, the growth of modern refinement, and
altogether too moonshiny to have been comprehended by our stout-hearted
and very practical fathers. With all their excellences, they had nothing
sentimental about them; they were bent on reducing all things to
practical, manageable realities. They would not hear of churches, but
called them meeting-houses; they would not be called clergymen, but
_ministers_ or servants,--thereby signifying their calling to real,
tangible work among real men and things.

As we have already said, in the beginnings of New England, the Church
and State were identical, and the clergy _ex officio_ the main
counsellors and directors of the Commonwealth; and when this especial
prerogative was relinquished, they naturally retained something of the
bent it had given them.

An interesting portion of these sketches comprises the lives of
ministers during our Revolutionary struggle, showing how ardently and
manfully at that time the clergy headed the people. Many of them went
into the army as chaplains; one or two, more zealous still, even took up
temporal arms; while the greater number showered the enemy with sermons,
tracts, and pamphlets.

Some of the more zealous politicians among them did not scruple to bring
their sentiments even into the prayers of the church. We recollect
an anecdote of a stout Whig minister of New Haven, who, during the
occupation of the town by the British, was ordered to offer public
prayers for the King, which he did as follows: "O Lord, bless thy
servant, King George, and grant unto him wisdom; for thou knowest, O
Lord, _he needs it_."

So afterwards, in the time of the Embargo