The characters here sketched, though perfectly individual, are in so great a degree the result of peculiar political influences, that it would be difficult to suppose their existence elsewhere than in New England. We have therefore chosen this book as a kind of standpoint from which to take a glance at the New England clergy and pulpit. The earliest constitution of government in New England was a theocracy; it was the realization of Arnold's idea of the identity of Church and State. Under it the clergy had peculiar powers and privileges, which, it is but fair to say, they turned to the advantage of the Commonwealth more than has generally been the case with any privileged order. A time, however, came when the democratic element, which these men themselves had fostered, worked out its logical results, by depriving them of all special immunities, and leaving them, like any other citizens, to make their way by pure force of character, and to be rated, like other men, simply for what they were and what they could do. It is creditable to the intelligence and shrewdness of this body of men that the more far-sighted among them received this change with satisfaction; that they were such uncommonly fair logicians as to be willing to accept the direct inference from principles which they had been foremost to inculcate, and, like men of strong mind and clear conscience, were not afraid to rest their claim to influence and deference on the manfulness with which they should strive to deserve them. Dr. Sprague's book contains pictures of life under both the old _régime_ and the new. The following extract from the venerable Josiah Quincy's recollections of the Rev. Mr. French, of Andover, is interesting, as an illustration of the olden times. "Mrs. Dowse, my maternal aunt, has often related to me her pride and delight at visiting at the Rev. Mr. Phillips', her paternal grandfather's house, when a child; which was interesting as a statement of the manners of those early times in Massachusetts, before the sceptre of worldly power, which the first settlers of the Colony had placed in the hands of the clergy, had been broken. The period was about between 1760 and the Revolution. The parsonage at Andover was situated about two or three hundred rods from the meeting-house, which was three stories high, of immense dimensions, far greater, I should think, than those of any meeting-houses in these anti-church-going, degenerate times. It was on a hill, slightly elevated above the parsonage, so that all the flock could see the pastor as he issued from it.