those of whom it made a false report, as of "mother Tiffeyn."—"Decem. y^e XXI day my brother Alibaster came to my house & toulde me y^t he made certayne inglishe verses in his sleepe, wh. he recited unto me, & I lent him XL^s."—"1603 April y^e 28^th day was the funeralles kept at Westminster for our late Queene Elizabethe."—"1603. On Munday y^e seconde of Maye, one Keitley, a blackesmythe, dwellinge in Lynton in Cambridgeshire, had a poore man to his father whom he kepte. A gentleman of y^e same Towne sent a horse to shoe, the father held up the horses legge whilest his soonne did shoe him. The horse struggled & stroke the father on y^e belly with his foote & overthrewe him. The soonne laughed thereat & woulde not helpe his father uppe, for the which some that were present reproved him greatlye. The soonne went forwarde in shoinge of y^e horse, & when he had donne he went uppon his backe, mynding to goe home with him. The horse presently did throughe him of his backe against a poste & clave his hed in sonder. Mistress Mannocke did knowe y^e man, for his mother was her nurse. Grave judicium Dei in irrisorem patris sui." These little scraps of Latin, sometimes running into a distich, are frequent signs of a certain classical proclivity of the writer. Any one who should infer, from the good man's arbitrary mode of spelling many words, that he was an illiterate person, would be grievously mistaken, in his ignorance of the universal characteristic and license of that age in that matter. The Queen herself was by no means so good a "speller," by our standard, as was Adam Winthrop. The extraordinary way in which letters were then left out of words where they were needed, and most lavishly multiplied where no possible use could be made of them, is a phenomenon never accounted for.

Adam Winthrop was for several years auditor of the accounts of Trinity and St. John's Colleges, Cambridge, and records his visits to the University in the discharge of his duties. We have specimens of a pleasant correspondence between him and his sister, Lady Mildmay, also with his wife, marked by a sweet and gentle tone, the utterance of a kindly spirit,—fragrant records of hearts once so warm with love.

It must have been with supreme delight that Adam entered in his diary, that on January 12, 1587, [January 22, 1588, N.S.,] was born his only son, John, one of five children by his second wife. John came into the world between the years that marked, respectively, the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the visit of the Spanish Armada. We can well conceive under what gracious and godly influences he received his early nurture. His mother died only one year before he, at the age of forty-two, embarked for America, his father having not long preceded her. Evidence abundant was in our possession that John Winthrop had received what even now would be called a good education, and what in his own time was a comparatively rare one. It had generally been taken for granted, however, that he had never been a member of either of the Universities. His present biographer tells us that long before undertaking his present grateful task he had never been reconciled to admit the inference which had been drawn from silence on this point. He remembered, by references in his own reading, that by some oversight there had been an omission of names in the Cambridge University Register from June, 1589, to June, 1602, and that no admissions were recorded earlier than 1625. John Winthrop might, therefore, have at least "gone to college," if he had not "gone through college." His biographer had also noticed in the Governor's "Christian Experience," drawn up and signed by him in New England on his forty-ninth birthday, 1636-7, an allusion to his having been at Cambridge when "about 14 yrs of age," and having had a lingering fever there. An entry in the records of his father must have been a most grateful discovery to the Governor's descendant in the seventh generation. "1602. The 2^d of December I rode to Cambridge. The VIII^th day John my soonne was admitted into Trinitie College." But the old mystery vanishes only to give place to another, which has a spice of romance in it. John Winthrop did not graduate at Cambridge. He was a lawful husband when seventeen years of age, and a happy father at eighteen.

In a time-stained and most precious document from his pen and from his heart, relating his religious experience, to be referred to more particularly by-and-by, he charges himself in his youth with grievous sin. What we know of his whole life and character would of itself forbid us to accept literally his severe self-judgment, much more to draw from his language the inference which like language would warrant, if used in our times. Those who have even but a superficial acquaintance with religious diaries, especially with such as date from near that age, need not be told that their writers, when sincerely devout by the Puritan standard, aimed to search and judge their own hearts and lives with all that penetrating, self-revealing, unsparing scrutiny and severity which they believed were turned upon them by the all-seeing eye of infinite purity. They wished to anticipate the Great Tribunal, and to avert the surprise of any new disclosure there by admitting to themselves while still in the flesh the worst that it could pronounce against them. Men and women who before the daily companions and witnesses of their lives would stand stoutly, and honestly too, in self-defence against all imputations, and might even boast themselves—as St. Paul did—of a surplusage of merits of some sort, when registering the barometer and the thermometer of their religious experience were the most unrelenting self-accusers. It is safe to say, as a general thing, that those who in that introspection, in the measurement of their heats and chills of piety, grieved most deeply and found the most ingenious causes for self-infliction were either the most calculating hypocrites or the most truly godly. To which of the two classes any one particular individual might belong could not always be infallibly concluded from what he wrote. That comfort-loving and greed-indulging, yet picturesque, old sinner, Samuel Pepys, Esq., did not profess to keep a religious diary. But many such diaries have been kept by men who might have covered alternate pages with matter similar to his own, or with worse. We must interpret the religious diaries of that age by aids independent of those which their contents furnish us. John Winthrop, writing of his youth when he had grown to the full exalted stature of Christian manhood, and though sweetly mellowed in the graces of his character by genial ripening from within his soul, was still a Puritan of the severest standard theologically, and, by principle, charges himself with heinous sin. We feel assured that he was not only guiltless of any folly or error that would deserve such a designation, but that he even overstated the degree of his addiction to the lighter human faults. Only after such a preliminary assertion of incredulity as to any literal truth in them, could we consent to copy his own words, as follows:—"In my youth I was very lewdly disposed, inclining unto & attempting (so far as my heart enabled me) all kinds of wickedness, except swearing & scorning religion, wh. I had no temptation unto in regard of my education. About ten years of age I had some notions of God: for, in some frighting or danger, I have prayed unto God, & found manifest answer: y^e remembrance whereof, many years after, made me think that God did love me: but it made me no whit the better. After I was twelve years old, I began to have some more savor of religion: & I thought I had more understanding in divinity than many of my years," etc. Yes, he evidently had. And though the kind of "divinity" which had trained his soul was of a grim sort, his own purity and gentleness