had wisdom, great learning, great force of will, devout
consecration, philanthropy, purity of life. For once in the
history of the world, the sovereign places were filled by the
sovereign men. They bore themselves with the air of leaderships;
they had the port of philosophers, noblemen and kings. The
writings of our earliest times are full of reference to the
majesty of their looks, the awe inspired by their presence, the
grandeur and power of their words."

New England surely owes something of her gift of "ready and
commanding speech," to these early talkers, who put their whole
intellectual force into a sermon, and who thought nothing of a
prayer lasting for two hours and a sermon for three or even four.
Nathaniel Ward, whose caustic wit spared neither himself nor the
most reverend among his brethren, wrote in his "Simple Cobbler":
"We have a strong weakness in New England, that when we are
speaking, we know not how to conclude. We make many ends, before
we make an end.... We cannot help it, though we can; which is the
arch infirmity in all morality. We are so near the west pole, that
our longitudes are as long as any wise man would wish and somewhat
longer. I scarce know any adage more grateful than '_Grata
brevitas_'."

Mr. Cotton was no exception to this rule, but his hearers would
not have had him shorter. It was, however, the personality of the
man that carried weight and nothing that he has left for a mocking
generation to wonder over gives slightest hint of reason for the
spell he cast over congregations, under the cathedral towers, or
in the simple meeting house in the new Boston. The one man alive,
who, perhaps, has gone through his works conscientiously and