it now where he had danced many a night,

and so to the scaffold, just without the window, whence he could see up and down the vast court of Whitehall, from gate to gate,* paved with a great throng of heads. Even then and there rested on him the same kingly composure; the fine oval face, pale but unmoved; the peaked beard carefully trimmed, as you see it in the well-known pictures by Vandyke, at Windsor or at Blenheim.

He has a word with old Bishop Juxon, who totters beside him; a few words for others who are within hearing; examines the block, the axe; gives some brief cautions to the executioner; then, laying down his head, lifts his own hand for signal, and with a crunching thud of sound it is over.

And poet Milton-has he shown any relenting? Not one whit; he is austere among the most austere; in this very week he is engaged upon his defence of regicide, with its stinging, biting sen

*In that day Whitehall Street was separated from Charing Cross by the famous gate of Holbeins; and in the other di rection it was crossed, near Old Palace Yard, by the King'sStreet Gate thus forming a vast court.

tences. He is a friend and party to the new Commonwealth; two months only after the execution of the King, he is appointed Secretary to the State Council, and under it is conducting the Latin correspondence. He demolishes, by order of the same Council, the Eikon Basilike (supposed in that day to be the king's work) with his fierce onslaught of the Eikonoklastes. His words are bitter as gall; he even alludes, in no amiable tone-with acrid emphasis, indeed-to the absurd rumor, current with some, that the King, through his confidential instrument, Buckingham, had poisoned his own father.

He is further appointed to the answering of Salmasius,* an answer with which all Europe prèsently rings. It was in these days, and with such work crowding him, that his vision fails; and to these days, doubtless belongs that noble sonnet on

*Salmasius, a Leyden professor, had been commissioned by Royalists to write a defence of Charles I., and vindicate his memory. Milton was commissioned to reply; and the result was a Latin battle in Billingsgate.

Milton calls his antagonist "a grammatical louse, whose only treasure of merit and hope of fame consisted in a glossary."

his blindness, which is worth our staying for, here

and now:

"When I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent, which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he, returning, chide;
'Dost God exact day-labor, light denied?'
I fondly ask: But Patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies- 'God doth not need
Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed

And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve, who only stand and wait.'"

Wonderful, is it not, that such a sonnet-so full of rare eloquence and rare philosophy-so full of all that most hallows our infirm humanity could be written by one-pouring out his execrations on the head of Salmasius-at strife in his own household at strife (as we shall find) with his own daughters? Wonderful, is it not, that Carlyle could write as he did about the heroism of the humblest as well as bravest, and yet grow into a rage- over his wife's shoulders and at her cost

with a rooster crowing in his neighbor's yard? Ah, well, the perfect ones have not yet come upon our earth, whatever perfect poems they may write.

Change of Kings.

But at last comes a new turn of the wheel to English fortunes. Cromwell is dead; the Commonwealth is ended; all London is throwing its cap in the air over the restoration of Charles II. Poor blind Milton* is in hiding and in peril. His name is down among those accessory to the murder of the King. The ear-cropped Prynne-who is now in Parliament, and who hates Milton as Milton scorned Prynne-is very likely hounding on those who would bring the great poet to judgment. "Tis long matter of doubt. Past his house near Red Lion Square the howling mob drag the bodies of Cromwell and Ireton, and hang them in their dead ghastliness.

Milton, however, makes lucky escape, with only a short term of prison; but for some time thereafter he was in fear of assassination. Such a rollicking

*His blindness dating from the year 1652.

daredevil, as Scott in his story of Woodstock, has painted for us in Roger Wildrake (of whom there were many afloat in those times) would have liked no better fun than to run his rapier through such a man as John Milton; and in those days he would have been pardoned for it.

That capital story of Woodstock one should read when they are upon these times of the Commonwealth. There are, indeed, anachronisms in it; kings escaping too early or too late, or dying a little out of time to accommodate the exigencies of the plot; but the characterization is marvellously spirited; and you see the rakehelly cavaliers, and the fine old king-ridden knights, and the sourmouthed Independents, and the glare and fumes and madness of the civil war, as you find them in few history pages.

Milton, meanwhile, in his quiet home again, revolves his old project of a great sacred poem. He taxes every visitor who can, to read to him in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Dutch. His bookly appetite is omnivorous. His daughters have large share of this toil. Poor girls, they have been little taught, and not wisely They read what they read only by