188 Nations lately become Literary. [Ch. XXVI. 



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 f ; and 

 liiose who are acquainted with the characters of 

 Hooker, Davenport, Stone, WarhamJ, Cotton, 

 Dunsler, Chauncey, Eliot, the Mathers, and 

 other distinguished clergymen; and ofWinthrop, 

 Hayner, Eaton, Hopkins, Wyllys, and Wolcoi, 

 eminent civilians of Massachusetts and Connec- 

 ticut, 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, v>as precisely that kind which was most 



* Harvard college was Instituted in 163S, a few years after the 

 first settlement 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. 



f The first printing press established in North America was by 

 Mr. Samuel Green, at Cambridge, in Massachusetts, in the year 

 1638. The first work printed was the Freentan's Oath; the next 

 an Almanac, made for New England, by Mr. Pierce, a mariner ; 

 and then the Psalms of David, newly turned into metre, 8fc. 

 There was printing work done in South America earlier than this. 

 Professor Barton, of Philadelphia, whose zeal and talents in ex- 

 ploring 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. 



1 The rev. John Warham, who died at Windsor, in Connec- 

 ticut, in 1670, is said to have been the first minister in New En- 

 gland who used nates in preaching. 



