“Judge Sewall is better known to us in both his outer and inner being than any other individual in our local history of two hundred and fifty years; and this is true not only of himself, but through his pen, curiously active, faithful, candid, kind, impartial, and ever just, his own times stand revealed and described to us. His surroundings and companions, his home and public life, the habits, usages, customs, and events, and even the food which we can almost smell and taste, the clothes, and furnishings, the modes of hospitality, of travel, the style of things,—all in infinite detail; the military service, the formal ceremonials and courtesies, the excitements, panics, disasters,—all these have come down to us through Sewall’s pen, with a fullness and old-time flavor and charm, which we might in vain seek to gather from many hundred volumes. And all this comes from Sewall having kept a daily journal from 1674 to 1729, fifty-five years,”—and forty of these years come within the scope of the present chapter. These journals had long been known to exist in a branch of Sewall’s family, but as, Dr. Ellis says, they “had been kept with much reserve, sparingly yielding to earnest inquirers the information they were known to contain.” President Quincy had drawn from them in his _History of Harvard University_, and had called them “curious and graphic,” as his extracts show. They had also been used by Holmes in his _American Annals_, by Washburn in his _Judicial History of Mass._, and by others. In 1868, some friends of the Mass. Historical Society purchased the diaries and other Sewall papers of the holders, and gave them to the society.[374] The diaries have since been published, and make part of the _Collections_ of that society.[375] Despite a good deal of a somewhat ridiculous conservatism, linked with a surprising pettiness in some ways, the character of Sewall is impressed upon the present generation in a way to do him honor. His was a struggle to uphold declining puritanism, and the contrasts presented by the viceroyalty of New England at that time to one who was bred under the first charter must have been trying to Christian virtues, even were they such as Sewall possessed.[376] Dr. Ellis has pointed out[377] how universally kindly Sewall was in what he recorded of those with whom he came in contact. “There are no grudges, no animosities, no malice, no bitter musings, no aggravating reproaches of those—some very near him—who caused him loss and grief, but ever efforts to reconcile, by forbearance, remonstrance, and forgiveness.” All this may be truly said, and afford a contrast to what the private diaries of his contemporaries, the two Mathers, would prompt us to say of their daily records. Those who are more considerate of the good names of those divines than they were themselves have thus far prevented the publication of these diaries. Dr. Ellis[378] says of them:—