The great storehouse of information for the Andros period is the _Andros Tracts_, 3 vols., edited for the Prince Society by W.H. Whitmore. See also Sewall's _Diary, Mass. Hist. Coll._, 5th series, vols. v.--viii. Sewall has been appropriately called the Puritan Pepys. His book is a mirror of the state of society in Massachusetts at the time when it was beginning to be felt that the old theocratic idea had been tried in the balance and found wanting. There is a wonderful charm in such a book. It makes one feel as if one had really "been there" and taken part in the homely scenes, full of human interest, which it so naively portrays. Anne Bradstreet's works have been edited by J.H. Ellis, Charlestown, 1867. For further references and elaborate bibliographical discussions, see Winsor's _Narrative and Critical History of America_, vol. iii.; and his _Memorial History of Boston_, 4 vols., Boston, 1880. There is a good account of the principal New England writers of the seventeenth century, with illustrative extracts, in Tyler's _History of American Literature_, 2 vols., New York, 1878. For extracts see also the first two volumes of Stedman and Hutchinson's _Library of American Literature_, New York, 1888. In conclusion I would observe that town histories, though seldom written in a philosophical spirit and apt to be quite amorphous in structure, are a mine of wealth for the philosophic student of history. NOTES: [1] Milman, _Lat. Christ._ vii. 395. [2] Gardiner, _The Puritan Revolution_, p. 12. [3] Green, _History of the English People_, iii. 47. [4] Steele's _Life of Brewster,_ p. 161. [5] Gardiner, _Puritan Revolution_, p. 50. [6] It is now 204 years since a battle has been fought in England. The last was Sedgmoor in 1685. For four centuries, since Bosworth, in 1485, the English people have lived in peace in their own homes, except for the brief episode of the Great Rebellion, and Monmouth's slight affair. This long peace, unparalleled in history, has powerfully influenced the English and American character for good. Since the Middle Ages most English warfare has been warfare at a distance, and that does not nourish the brutal passions in the way that warfare at home does. An instructive result is to be seen in the mildness of temper which characterized the conduct of our stupendous Civil War. Nothing like it was ever seen before. [7] Picton's _Cromwell_, pp. 61, 67; Gardiner, _Puritan Revolution_, p. 72. [8] Quincy, History of Harvard University, ii. 654. [9] C.F. Adams, _Sir Christopher Gardiner, Knight_, p. 31. [10] The compact drawn up in the Mayflower's cabin was not, in the strict sense a constitution, which is a document defining and limiting the functions of government. Magna Charta partook of the nature of a written constitution, as far as it went, but it did not create a government. [11] See Johnston's Connecticut, p. 321, a very brilliant book. [12] See the passionate exclamation of Endicott, below, p. 190.