angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems crowns of glory which should never fade away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt: for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged, on whose slightest action the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest, who had been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away. Events which shortsighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes, had been ordained on his account. For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the Evangelist, and the harp of the prophet. He had been wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had risen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God.

train of menials, legions of ministeringness of his soul that God had hid his face from him. But when he took his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. People who saw nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but their groans and their whining hymns, might laugh at them. But those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall of debate or in the field of battle. These fanatics brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of judgment and an immutability of purpose which some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which were in fact the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them tranquil on every other. One overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its terrors and pleasure its charms. They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm had made them Stoics, had cleared their minds from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them above the influence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. They went through the world, like Sir Artegal's iron man Talus with his flail, crushing and trampling dowa oppressors, mingling with human beings, but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities, insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain, not to be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier.

Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, the one all selfabasement, penitence, gratitude, passion; the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker: but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was half-maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the sceptre of the millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitter

Such we believe to have been the character of the Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their manners. We dislike the sullen gloom of their domestic habits. We acknowledge that the tone of their minds was often injured by straining after things too high for mortal reach: and we know that, in spite of their hatred of Popery, they too often fell into the worst vices of that bad system, intolerance and extravagant austerity, that they had their anchorites and their crusades, their Dunstans and their De Montforts, their

Dominics and their Escobars. Yet, when all circumstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate to pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and an useful body.

The Puritans espoused the cause of civil liberty mainly because it was the cause of religion. There was another party, by no means numerous, but distinguished by learning and ability, which acted with them on very different principles. We speak of those whom Cromwell was accustomed to call the Heathens, men who were, in the phraseology of that time, doubting Thomases or careless Gallios with regard to religious subjects, but passionate worshippers of freedom. Heated by the study of ancient literature, they set up their country as their idol, and proposed to themselves the heroes of Plutarch as their examples. They seem to have borne some resemblance to the Brissotines of the French Revolution. But it is not very easy to draw the line of distinction between them and their devout associates, whose tone and manner they sometimes found it convenient to affect, and sometimes, it is probable, imperceptibly adopted.

dangling courtiers, bowing at every step, and simpering at every word. They were not mere machines for destruction dressed up in uniforms, caned into skill, intoxicated into valour, defending without love, destroying without hatred. There was a freedom in their subserviency, a nobleness in their very degradation. The sentiment of individual independence was strong within them. They were indeed misled, but by no base or selfish motive. Compassion and romantic honour, the prejudices of childhood, and the venerable names of history, threw over them a spell potent as that of Duessa; and, like the Red-Cross Knight, they thought that they were doing battle for an injured beauty, while they defended a false and loathsome sorceress. In truth they scarcely entered at all into the merits of the political question. It was not for a treacherous king or an intolerant church that they fought, but for the old banner which had waved in so many battles over the heads of their fathers, and for the altars at which they had received the hands of their brides. Though nothing could be more erroneous than their political opinions, they possessed, in a far greater degree than their adversaries, those qualities which are the grace of private life. With many of the vices of the Round Table, they had also many of its virtues, courtesy, generosity, veracity, tenderness, and respect for women. They had far more both of profound and of polite learning than the Puritans. Their manners were more engaging, their tempers more amiable, their tastes more elegant, and their households more cheerful.

We now come to the Royalists. We shall attempt to speak of them, as we have spoken of their antagonists, with perfect candour. We shall not charge upon a whole party the profligacy and baseness of the horseboys, gamblers and bravoes, whom the hope of license and plunder attracted from all the dens of Whitefriars to the standard of Charles, and who disgraced their associates by excesses which, under the stricter discipline of the Parliamentary armies, were never tolerated. We will select a Milton did not strictly belong to any more favourable specimen. Thinking of the classes which we have described. as we do that the cause of the King was He was not a Puritan. He was not a the cause of bigotry and tyranny, we freethinker. He was not a Royalist. yet cannot refrain from looking with In his character the noblest qualities of complacency on the character of the every party were combined in harmo honest old Cavaliers. We feel a national nious union. From the Parliament pride in comparing them with the in- and from the Court, from the convenstruments which the despots of other ticle and from the Gothic cloister, from countries are compelled to employ, with the gloomy and sepulchral circles of the mutes who throng their ante- the Roundheads, and from the Christchambers, and the Janissaries who mas revel of the hospitable Cavalier, mount guard at their gates. Our his nature selected and drew to itself royalist countrymen were not heartless, whatever was great and good, while it

That from which the public character of Milton derives its great and peculiar splendour, still remains to be mentioned. If he exerted himself to overthrow a forsworn king and a persecuting hierarchy, he exerted himself in conjunction with others. But the glory of the battle which he fought for the species of freedom which is the most valuable, and which was then the least

rejected all the base and pernicious in- | feelings he sacrificed, in order to do gredients by which those finer elements what he considered his duty to manwere defiled. Like the Puritans, he lived kind. It is the very struggle of the "As ever in his great task-master's eye." noble Othello. His heart relents; but Like them, he kept his mind continu- his hand is firm. He does nought in ally fixed on an Almighty Judge and hate, but all in honour. He kisses the an eternal reward. And hence he beautiful deceiver before he destroys her. acquired their contempt of external circumstances, their fortitude, their tranquillity, their inflexible resolution. But not the coolest sceptic or the most profane scoffer was more perfectly free from the contagion of their frantic delusions, their savage manners, their ludicrous jargon, their scorn of science, and their aversion to pleasure. Hating tyranny with a perfect hatred, he had nevertheless all the estimable and orna-understood, the freedom of the human mental qualities which were almost entirely monopolised by the party of the tyrant. There was none who had a stronger sense of the value of literature, a finer relish for every elegant amusement, or a more chivalrous delicacy of honour and love. Though his opinions were democratic, his tastes and his associations were such as harmonise best with monarchy and aristocracy. He was under the influence of all the feelings by which the gallant Cavaliers were misled. But of those feelings he was the master and not the slave. Like the hero of Homer, he enjoyed all the pleasures of fascination; but he was not fascinated. He listened to the song of the Syrens; yet he glided by without being seduced to their fatal shore. He tasted the cup of Circe; but he bore about him a sure antidote against the effects of its bewitching sweetness. The illusions which captivated his imagination never impaired his reasoning powers. The statesman was proof against the splendour, the solemnity, and the romance which enchanted the poet. Any person who will contrast the sentiments expressed in his treatises on Prelacy with the exquisite lines on ecclesiastical architecture and music in the Penseroso, which was published about the same time, will understand our meaning. This is an inconsistency which, more than any thing else, raises his character in our estimation, because it shows how many private tastes and

mind, is all his own. Thousands and tens of thousands among his contemporaries raised their voices against Shipmoney and the Star-chamber. But there were few indeed who discerned the more fearful evils of moral and intellectual slavery, and the benefits which would result from the liberty of the press and the unfettered exercise of private judgment. These were the objects which Milton justly conceived to be the most important. He was desirous that the people should think for themselves as well as tax themselves, and should be emancipated from the dominion of prejudice as well as from that of Charles. He knew that those who, with the best intentions, overlooked these schemes of reform, and contented themselves with pulling down the King and imprisoning the malignants, acted like the heedless brothers in his own poem, who, in their eagerness to disperse the train of the sorcerer, neglected the means of liberating the captive. They thought only of conquering when they should have thought of disenchanting.

"Oh, ye mistook! Ye should have snatched
his wand
Without the rod

And bound him fast.
reversed,

And backward mutters of dissevering
power,

We cannot free the lady that sits here Bound in strong fetters fixed and motion. less."

To reverse the rod, to spell the charm backward, to break the ties which bound

"Nitor in adversum; nec me, qui cætera,

vincit

66

They

a stupefied people to the seat of en- bated as criminal, or derided as parachantment, was the noble aim of Mil-doxical. He stood up for divorce and ton. To this all his public conduct regicide. He attacked the prevailing was directed. For this he joined the systems of education. His radiant Presbyterians; for this he forsook and beneficent career resembled that of them. He fought their perilous battle; the god of light and fertility. but he turned away with disdain from their insolent triumph. He saw that they, like those whom they had vanImpetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi." quished, were hostile to the liberty of It is to be regretted that the prose thought. He therefore joined the In-writings of Milton should, in our time, dependents, and called upon Cromwell be so little read. As compositions, to break the secular chain, and to save they deserve the attention of every man free conscience from the paw of the who wishes to become acquainted with Presbyterian wolf. With a view to the the full power of the English language. same great object, he attacked the They abound with passages compared licensing system, in that sublime trea- with which the finest declamations of tise which every statesman should wear Burke sink into insignificance. as a sign upon his hand and as front- are a perfect field of cloth of gold. The lets between his eyes. His attacks style is stiff with gorgeous embroidery. were, in general, directed less against Not even in the earlier books of the particular abuses than against those Paradise Lost has the great poet ever deeply-seated errors on which almost risen higher than in those parts of his all abuses are founded, the servile wor- controversial works in which his feelship of eminent men and the irrational ings, excited by conflict, find a vent in dread of innovation. bursts of devotional and lyric rapture. That he might shake the foundations It is, to borrow his own majestic lanof these debasing sentiments more guage, a sevenfold chorus of halleeffectually, he always selected for him- lujahs and harping symphonies." self the boldest literary services. He We had intended to look more closely never came up in the rear, when the out-at these performances, to analyse the works had been carried and the breach peculiarities of the diction, to dwell at entered. He pressed into the forlorn some length on the sublime wisdom of hope. At the beginning of the changes, the Areopagitica and the nervous rhehe wrote with incomparable energy and toric of the Iconoclast, and to point out eloquence against the bishops. But, some of those magnificent passages when his opinion seemed likely to pre- which occur in the Treatise of Revail, he passed on to other subjects, and formation, and the Animadversions on abandoned prelacy to the crowd of the Remonstrant. But the length to writers who now hastened to insult a which our remarks have already exfalling party. There is no more hazard-tended renders this impossible. ous enterprise than that of bearing the| We must conclude. And yet we torch of truth into those dark and infected recesses in which no light has ever shone. But it was the choice and the pleasure of Milton to penetrate the noisome vapours, and to brave the terrible explosion. Those who most disapprove of his opinions must respect the hardihood with which he maintained them. He, in general, left to others the eredit of expounding and defending the popular parts of his religious and political creed. He took his own stand upon those which the great body of his countrymen repro- | We can almost fancy that we are visit

can scarcely tear ourselves away from the subject. The days immediately following the publication of this relic of Milton appear to be peculiarly set apart, and consecrated to his memory. And we shall scarcely be censured it, on this his festival, we be found lingering near his shrine, how worthless soever may be the offering which we bring to it.

While this book lies on

our table, we seem to be contemporaries of the writer. We are transported a hundred and fifty years back.

and to heal. They are powerful, not only to delight, but to elevate and purify. Nor do we envy the man who can study either the life or the writings of the great poet and patriot, without aspiring to emulate, not indeed the sublime works with which his genius has enriched our literature, but the zeal with which he laboured for the public good, the fortitude with which he endured every private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked down on temptations and dangers, the deadly

ing him in his small lodging; that we see him sitting at the old organ beneath the faded green hangings; that we can catch the quick twinkle of his eyes, rolling in vain to find the day; that we are reading in the lines of his noble countenance the proud and mournful history of his glory and his affliction. We image to ourselves the breathless silence in which we should listen to his slightest word, the passionate vencration with which we should kneel to kiss his hand and weep upon it, the earnestness with which we should en-hatred which he bore to bigots and deavour to console him, if indeed such tyrants, and the faith which he so a spirit could need consolation, for the sternly kept with his country and with neglect of an age unworthy of his his fame. talents and his virtues, the eagerness with which we should contest with his daughters, or with his Quaker friend Elwood, the privilege of reading Homer to him, or of taking down the immortal accents which flowed from his lips.

MACHIAVELLI. (March, 1827.) Euvres complètes de MACHIAVEL, traduites par J. V. PERIER. Paris: 1825. THOSE who have attended to the practice of our literary tribunal are well aware that, by means of certain legal fictions similar to those of Westminster Hall, we are frequently enabled to take cognisance of cases lying beyond the sphere of our original jurisdiction. We need hardly say, therefore, that in the present instance M. Périer is merely a Richard Roe, who will not be mentioned in any subsequent stage of the proceedings, and whose name is used for the sole purpose of bringing Machiavelli into court.

These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet we cannot be ashamed of them; nor shall we be sorry if what we have written shall in any degree excite them in other minds. We are not much in the habit of idolizing either the living or the dead. And we think that there is no more certain indication of a weak and ill-regulated intellect than that propensity which, for want of a better name, we will venture to christen Boswellism. But there are a few characters which have stood the closest scrutiny and the severest tests, which have been tried in the furnace and have proved pure, which have been weighed in the We doubt whether any name in balance and have not been found literary history be so generally odious wanting, which have been declared as that of the man whose character and sterling by the general consent of man-writings we now propose to consider kind, and which are visibly stamped The terms in which he is commonly with the image and superscription of described would seem to import that he the Most High. These great men we was the Tempter, the Evil Principle, trust that we know how to prize; and the discoverer of ambition and revenge, of these was Milton. The sight of his the original inventor of perjury, and books, the sound of his name, are plea- that, before the publication of his fatal sant to us. His thoughts resemble Prince, there had never been a hypothose celestial fruits and flowers which crite, a tyrant, or a traitor, a simulated the Virgin Martyr of Massinger sent virtue, or a convenient crime. One lown from the gardens of Paradise to writer gravely assures us that Maurice the earth, and which were distinguished of Saxony learned all his fraudulent from the productions of other soils, not policy from that execrable volume. only by superior bloom and sweetness, Another remarks that since it was but by miraculous efficacy to invigorate | translated into Turkish, the Sultans