ligious feeling and ceremonial devotion, he was still constantly beset with doubts, fears and anxieties. He was sometimes seized with such an inward fear of sin, that even in the midst of company he has been known to retire to a corner of the room and pray audibly for grace and assistance. His whole life was dimmed by hypochondriac shadows, and it closed in darkness, save only the sunset beam that illumined his death-bed.

bridge. Here he completed his academical education. In the garden of this college is still to be seen a mulberry tree which he planted while a student there.

Milton was extremely beautiful in his youth, and upon this, an interesting anecdote is founded, though we are obliged to admit that its authority is somewhat questionable. He wandered one day, according to the legend, to a considerable distance into the country, when, feeling himself fatigued, he laid himself down at the foot of a tree, and fell asleep. It chanced that two ladies were passing by in a carriage. They were foreigners, but, attracted by the beauty of Milton's face, they stepped lightly from the carriage and approached him. One of them, struck with his appearance, took out her pencil and wrote the following verse from the Italian poet Guarini :

"Ye eyes! ye human stars! ye authors of my liveliest pangs! If thus, when shut, ye wound me, what must have been the effect, had ye been open."

The young lady, who was very beautiful, with trembling fingers, put the paper into Milton's hand, and departed with her companion. When he awoke he noticed the paper, and some of his friends, who were at a little distance, and had witnessed the adventure, explained to him what had happened. The imagination of the youthful poet was greatly excited by the event, which remained in his memory, and in his visit to Italy, long after, he sought with great diligence to discover the fair unknown. All his researches, however, proved abortive.

After leaving Cambridge, Milton went into Buckinghamshire, where his father, having retired from

business, had purchased an estate at Horton. He now devoted himself to study with great assiduity, and made himself not only master of the Greek and Roman classics, but of a vast field of general literature. It is supposed, also, that during this period he wrote several of his poems, and among them L' Allegro, and Il Penseroso, two pieces, which are as distinguished for sweetness and beauty, as is his Paradise Lost for sublimity. He also wrote at this time the Arcades, a dramatic composition, which was performed at Harefield Place, in the vicinity, by the children of the Countess Dowager of Derby, as the actors.

he

In 1637, Milton's mother died. He now visited Italy, where he spent a considerable period, making himself acquainted with Italian literature and dis tinguished individuals of the time. Among other persons of eminence, he was introduced to Grotius, at Paris, and Galileo at Padua. Hearing of the political troubles which now began to agitate his country, returned to England, and took up his residence in London. For a time, he devoted himself to the educa tion of his nephews, the Philips's, on a system of his own formation, in which he rejected the university routine, and sought to give a more vigorous exercise to the thinking faculties.

In 1641, he began his political career by writing several pamphlets upon the agitating topics of the day, which, however, had relation to ecclesiastical matters. In 1643, he married the daughter of a justice of the peace of Oxfordshire, by the name of Powell. This union was at first unhappy, for the lady, about a month after her marriage, having gone home to her

father's on a visit, sent Milton word that she did not intend to return. He accordingly repudiated her, and published several pamphlets to prove his right to set aside the marriage. He also proceeded to pay his addresses to a beautiful young lady of London, when he chanced to meet his wife, unexpectedly, at the house of a relation. She appears, by this time, to have deeply repented her conduct, and she instantly fell upon her knees, and besought him to forgive her. It is supposed that an allusion to this scene is made in Paradise Lost, where Eve is praying Adam's forgiveness for the sin into which she had led him:

"Soon his heart relented

Toward her, his life so late, and sole delight,
Now at his feet submissive in distress."

He not only forgave her, but when her family was reduced to distress, by the ruin of the royal cause to which they had been attached, he received them,father, mother, brothers, sisters,-into his house, giving them protection and free entertainment. In order to accommodate so large a household, he was obliged to obtain a much larger house; for his own father was living with him, and the school, which had begun with his nephews, was now considerably increased.

It was about the year 1644, that he published his Areopagitica, or speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing," a work of great eloquence and power, and perhaps the best of all his prose productions. His pen was now silent until after the execution of Charles I., in 1648, when he published his tract, entitled,