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continent threw wide its inviting portals to him. Everywhere through southern France and Italy, he was received with eager respect and cordial hospitality, and entertained by the patrons of learning and the choicest scholars, as an honored guest. Rarely had a private English gentleman received so much flattering attention as was now accorded to the author of "Comus," although he visited Galileo in the inquisitorial dungeons, and never withheld his own tongue from the utterance of his religious opinions. The wonders of art, which had made Italy the glory of the world, were now revealed probably to the first Englishman whose critical judgment and answering genius enabled him fully to appreciate them. Architecture, painting, sculpture, music, contributed their choicest stores to enrich a nature so magnificently endowed, and already so highly cultivated. It had been his intention to continue his journey to Greece, the earlier home of the arts; but his tour was abruptly terminated, for his patriotic ear now caught the first mutterings of the storm which was gathering to break upon his beloved native land. At the crisis of the revolution, England needed every faithful son at home. Thither, therefore, he hastened, to do what in him lay, in the coming battle for human rights. Humble enough was the weapon at first placed within his grasp-neither the sword of a captain, nor the pike of an invincible -only a pedagogue's switch. But he that is faithful

in the least, shall he not be counted worthy of the greatest? So John Milton used the birch with a zeal rarely surpassed by a schoolmaster, as the backs of his scholars testified, and did what he could to ground them well in the knowledge of the classics.

Later, Providence summoned him to the use of another instrument, in the wielding of which he was already well versed. The hosts of England were arrayed in unbrotherly battle against each other. Cavaliers and Roundheads were joined in the fearful shock, and from the din and cloud strode forth the gigantic figure of Oliver, leading his Ironsides to victory. Cromwell's sword, like that of Gideon of old, wrought marvellous things. What that sword was in battle, was Milton's pen in controversy; the foremost and most trenchant weapon in the defence of the Revolution, and the rights of men. A fearful antagonist was he, answering to his own magnificent description of a champion of the truth. "Zeal,” he says, in the most fiery and vehement prose-poetry in the English language, "whose substance is ethereal, arming in complete diamond, ascends his fiery chariot drawn with two blazing meteors, figured like beasts, but of a higher breed than any the zodiac yields— resembling two of those four which Ezekiel and St. John saw the one visaged like a lion, to express power, high authority and indignation, the other of countenance like a man, to cast derision and scorn

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upon perverse and fraudulent seducers; with these, the invincible warrior Zeal, shaking loosely the slack reins, drives over the heads of scarlet prelates, and such as are insolent to maintain traditions, bruising their stiff necks under his flaming wheels."

Nor was it needful that he should defend liberty from its open foes only. On the triumph of the Presbyterians in the severe contest, they sought to hamper and restrict the liberty of the press, following hard after the evil example of despotic king and hierarchic church. He now stands up before the parliament and the world, to utter his immortal oration, the grandest in our own, perhaps in any language, in behalf of the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. Hear him, as he pleads for the charter of freedom in every land and age.

"I deny not but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye, how books demean themselves, as well as men; and thereafter to confine in prison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors; for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in them, to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are. Nay, they do preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men.

"And yet on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man, kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself; kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. It is true no age can restore a life whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for want of which whole nations fare worse. We should be wary, therefore, what persecution we raise against the living labors of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom; and if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at the ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself-slays an immortality rather than a life."

He now, by the assaults of foreign hirelings, is summoned to the "Defence of the People of England." He is seated in his little study, carpet of rushes beneath his feet, the walls decorated with green hangings, on one side his much used organ, and in the middle of the room his writing-table, at which he sits

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as if chained. Never did galley-slave ply the oar more constantly than he the pen. But what is this? Is daylight fading in the west, and twilight creeping on? For the page is melting away before his eyes. Nay, for as he casts his glance through the window, catching sight of vernal green and trees, he beholds bright masses of sunshine lying on the earth. He lays down his pen and betakes him to the organ to refresh himself a while with those strains which seem to bear the human spirit aloft above the darkness and storms of life. As the last chord is struck, he rises like a giant refreshed with new wine, to prosecute his scholastic labors. But the letters are blurred and indistinct. A misty veil seems to have risen between him. self and the lately written page. Can it be that sight is fading? The physicians are summoned. They declare upon examination that the work must be given up. "But the work cannot be given up; for it is the defence of England." Nevertheless, say the doctors, the public weal must be surrendered to private good. "The price at which the world will buy that book, John Milton, is thy blindness." "Is it so? then must the sacrifice be made."

There is a grand temple, wherein have been offered many oblations and sacrifices for the good of mankind; where stalwart men and fragile women, mailed warriors and studious monks, watchers in the dwellings of woe, and sailors upon the stormy main, nurses at