to myself in those places, never to be the first to begin any conversation on religion; but if any questions were put to me concerning my faith, to declare it without any reserve or fear."

Milton had intended to travel through Greece, but the political news from England altered this plan. He says," I thought it base to be travelling for amusement abroad, while my fellow-citizens were fighting for liberty at home."

Just before his departure from Italy, Milton had an interview with Galileo, who had then become totally blind, and whose doctrine of the earth's motion still exposed him to the suspicions of the bigot, and the insults of the ignorant.

Returning to England, Milton took lodgings in St. Bride's Churchyard, Fleet Street, where his toils as a tutor commenced, the first pupils being his two nephews, John and Edward Phillips.

We next trace him to what is called "a garden house" in Aldersgate Street, where the number of his scholars increased. His labours were not however limited to the drilling of boys in Greek and Latin, as he now entered with an impetuous eagerness into the fierce political and theological struggles of the time. But teaching and polemics did not wholly absorb his mind. In the Whitsuntide of 1643, he found time to marry his first wife, Mary Powell, though it appears the courting was rather brief. His nephew and biographer, Phillips, says, -"He took a journey into the country, nobody about him certainly knowing the reason: after a month's stay, home he returns a married man, that went out a

bachelor." The lady The lady having lived where there was "much company, merriment, and dancing," was not fitted to be a companion for the man who cared more for poetry and politics than for all the dancing and merriment in Europe; and she soon returned to her father in Oxfordshire. It is quite unnecessary to repeat in this place the well-known story of their short separation and subsequent reconciliation.

One effect was however produced by the temporary estrangement of the wife, which ought not to pass without notice. Whilst Milton was yet uncertain of her return, and after his entreaties had been disdainfully rejected, the thought of a divorce presented itself. He immediately began to examine the question of the indissolubility of marriage, and, in 1644, published the work entitled The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, in which he insisted that desertion was a sufficient reason for annulling the marriage contract. The return of his wife prevented any attempts to secure legislative sanction for these opinions.

The question of the divorce did not draw Milton aside from the study of subjects bearing on the welfare of the whole nation. In this same year he published his Tractate on Education, and also a work entitled Areopagitica. The former was an attempt to point out more effective methods of imparting knowledge, and to lay down a course of training which should "fit a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war." A noble scheme truly! but requiring the highest genius and the noblest moral qualities in both teacher and

pupil. The Areopagitica is a most eloquent address to the parliament, in favour of the freedom of the press, and against the narrow-minded intolerance of the Presbyterians, who seemed resolved to crush all expresssion of opinion by any except themselves.

After the total prostration of the Royalists at the battle of Naseby, in 1645, the parents of his wife found shelter in Milton's house, until his influence procured a restoration of their sequestrated property. The Poct's home formed at this time a community, in which the different feelings excited by the struggles of the civil war must have been strongly exhibited. His own father had taken refuge with him after the capture of Reading by the parliamentary army. The relatives of his wife, and his own brothers and sisters, found shelter in the house in Barbican, to which he had removed after leaving the smaller residence in Aldersgate Street. It was probably in this house that his first and second daughters, Anne and Mary, were born, and here his father died.

In 1647 we find Milton living in Holborn, in a house from which he could walk out into the fields round Lincoln's Inn. Here he remained during the eventful period which followed the seizure of the King, and from this abode he probably often walked to Westminster in that critical week of January, 1649, when London saw the strange spectacle of a King tried and sentenced by his parliament.

In 1649 Milton was appointed Secretary for the "Foreign Tongues" to the Council of State; after which he removed to Scotland-yard, in Westminster. It was now that Milton composed those noble dispatches to

Gustavus, king of Sweden, to the States of Holland, and to the Protestant Cantons of Switzerland, in which he urged upon them the duty of endeavouring to stop the persecution of the Waldenses by Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy. A dispatch was also sent to this prince, in which he was reminded of the protection given by the noblest of his ancestors to the Piedmontese Christians. The noble sonnet which Milton wrote on the slaughter of these defenceless people is probably known to many

readers.

The arduous labours in which Milton was now engaged led at length to the calamity so long apprehended. He became totally blind in the year 1653. The more severe duties of his office were now given up to others, but he still received pay at the rate of "15s. 101⁄2d. per diem,” and removed to "a pretty garden-house, in Petty France, Westminster, opening into St. James' Park." This is now Charles Street.

Perhaps the following account by himself of the gradual approach of his blindness will not be unacceptable to the reader. The statement is found in a letter to one of his friends, Leonardi Philaras, an Athenian gentleman, who was then residing at Paris, as ambassador from the Duke of Parma. It seems that Philaras had advised Milton to seek the assistance of the French oculist Thevenot. Milton, in reply, states the various symptoms connected with his loss of sight. The letter is dated 1654:-"It is now about ten years since," he says, "I perceived my vision to grow weak and dull. In the morning, if I began to read, as was my custom, my eyes instantly ached intensely, but were refreshed

after a little exercise. The candle which I looked at seemed encircled with a rainbow. Not long after, the sight in the left eye became quite obscured: the sight in my other eye has now been gradually and sensibly vanishing away for about three years. Some months before it had entirely perished, though I stood motionless, every thing which I looked at seemed in motion to and fro. While I had any sight left, as soon as I lay down on my bed and turned on either side, a flood of light used to gush from my closed eye-lids. At present every species of illumination being as it were extinguished, there is diffused around me nothing but darkness, or darkness mingled and streaked with an ashy brown. And though your physician may kindle a small ray of hope, yet I make up my mind to the malady as quite incurable.”

In this house in Westminster, Milton's first wife died, and to this abode he brought his second wife, Catherine Woodcock. She died in about a year after the marriage, and her husband, in his well-known sonnet, calls her

my late espoused saint." This building yet remains, and on the front is a tablet, placed there by Hazlitt, bearing the words-" Sacred to Milton, the prince of Poets."

The death of Cromwell in September, 1658, drew Milton from his retirement. He dreaded the intolerance of the Presbyterian preachers, and published his treatise on the Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes, in which he warned the nation against this apprehended danger. He also endeavoured, in three other treatises, to induce the people to acquiesce in the establishment of some