As _we_ sometimes take
credit to ourselves (since all commendation of our ancestry is indirect
self-flattery) for what the Puritans fathers never were, so there are
others who, to gratify a spite against their descendants, blame them for
not having been what they could not be; namely, before their time in such
matters as slavery, witchcraft, and the like. The view, whether of friend
or foe, is equally unhistorical, nay, without the faintest notion of all
that makes history worth having as a teacher. That our grandfathers
shared in the prejudices of their day is all that makes them human to us;
and that nevertheless they could act bravely and wisely on occasion makes
them only the more venerable. If certain barbarisms and superstitions
disappeared earlier in New England than elsewhere, not by the decision of
exceptionally enlightened or humane judges, but by force of public
opinion, that is the fact that is interesting and instructive for us. I
never thought it an abatement of Hawthorne's genius that he came lineally
from one who sat in judgment on the witches in 1692; it was interesting
rather to trace something hereditary in the sombre character of his
imagination, continually vexing itself to account for the origin of evil,
and baffled for want of that simple solution in a personal Devil.
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