the new england qvarterly

A Historical Review of New England Life and Letters

Another Legend of the Province House: Jonathan Belcher, William Shirley, and the Misconstruction of the Imperial Relationship Stephen Foster 179 Phillis Wheatley, Melancholy Muse Astrid Franke 224 Another Nullification Crisis: Vermont's 1850 Habeas Corpus Law Horace K. Houston Jr. 252 Memoranda and Documents

“A Principle of Spiritual Life”: David Brainerd’s Surviving Sermon John Grigg 273 “American Tears”: Cotton Mather and the Plight of Eastern Orthodox Christians William P. Hyland 282 Essay Reviews

Lowell’s Comeback? Steven Gould Axelrod 291 Region and Environment in American Literature Nina Baym 300

Book Reviews

Hawthorne: A Life, by Brenda Wineapple Gerald R. Griffin 308

The Beecher Sisters, by Barbara A. White Marie Morgan 311

Mad Yankees: The Hartford Retreat for the Insane and Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry, by Lawrence B. Goodheart

Gracefully Insane: The Rise and Fall of America’s Premier Mental Hospital, by Alex Beam Matthew W. Osborn 315 John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father, by Francis J. Bremer Richard S. Dunn 320 American Creed: Philanthropy and the Rise of Civil Society, 1700-1865, by Kathleen D. McCarthy Johann N. Neem 323 To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguitiesof the American Founders, by Bernard Bailyn Peter S. Onuf 325 The Seventeenth-Century Town Records of Scituate, Massachusetts, edited by Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs Laurence R. Pizer 327 Looking Back at Vermont: Farm Security Administration Photographs, 1936-1942, by Nancy Price Graff Joel Porte 330 Jonathan Edwards and the Bible, by Robert E. Brown Norman Pettit 333

Communications 335

Contents