532 Nations lately become Literary, 



both for learning and piety, and the circum- 

 stances attending their establishment, were a suf- 

 ficient pledge of their disposition to promote the 

 interests of knowledge, which they well knew 

 to be one of the most important pillars of the 

 church as well as of the state. Accordingly, dur- 

 ing the greater part of the seventeenth century, 

 the literature of the American colonies was in a 

 great measure confined to New-England. There 

 the first College in America was instituted ^ there 

 the first printing press was established ; e and those 

 who are acquainted with the characters of Hooker, 

 Davenport, Stone, Warham/ Cotton, Dun- 

 ster, Eliot, the Mathers, and other distin- 

 guished clergymen; and of Winthrop, Haynes, 

 Eaton, Hopkins, Wyllys, and Wolcot, eminent- 

 civilians of Massachusetts and Connecticut, need 

 not be informed that the number of learned men, 

 at that period in New-England, was by no means 

 small. 



The kind of learning most in vogue among 

 such of the clergy and laity of that country as de- 

 voted themselves to study, during the seventeenth 

 century, was precisely that kind which was most 



d Harvard College was instituted in 1638, a few years after the first set- 

 tlement of the colony. In the Additional Notes to this volume, the reader 

 will find as particular an account of all the colleges in the United States, 

 as the author could collect. He therefore forbears to enter into further 

 details in this place. 



e The first printing press established in North-America was by Mr. Sa- 

 muel Green, at Cambridge, in Massachusetts, in the year 1638. The first 

 work printed was the Freeman's Oath ; the next an Almanack, made for 

 New-England, by Mr. Pierce, a mariner; and then the Psalms of David, 

 newly turned into Metre, &c. There was printing work done in South- 

 America earlier than this. Professor Barton, of Philadelphia, whose 

 zeal and talents in exploring American antiquities do him the highest 

 honour, lately showed the author a Vocabulary of one of the principal 

 Indian languages of South- America, printed in Mexico, not long after the 

 middle of the sixteenth century. 



/ The Rev. John Warham, who died at Windsor, in Connecticut, in 

 1670, is said to have been the first minister in New-England who used 

 Nates in preaching. 



