nary life. They did not have to run the career of arms as the road to power. And the condition of a great prince in the countries of Christendom is rather that of one representing sovereignty than of one actually exercising it; since all the labor and responsibility and personal danger devolve on ministers and generals holding the delegated powers of government. Aurelius, it is said, contemplated the establishment of a female senate. Heliogabalus actually did organize one under the presidency of his mother; but Ælius Lampridius, who tells the tale, says the members. chiefly occupied themselves with points of etiquette, of regulation of dress, and other like feminine mysteries of state. And whether the story of the Amazons be authentic history, or only a cunningly devised fable, it presents at all events a poor picture of what society would become if our councils were filled and our armies manned with women, and they rather than men, or equally with men, discharged the external and political duties of society, doing so at the sacrifice of all that delicacy and maternal tenderness which are among the most appropriate and the highest charms of

Hers be the domain of the moral affections, the empire of the heart, the coequal sovereignty of intellect, taste, and social refinement; leave the rude commerce of camps and the soul-hardening struggles of political power to the harsher spirit of man, that he may still look up to her as a purer and brighter being, an emanation of some better world, irradiating like a rainbow of hope the stormy elements of life.

JOHN MILTON.*

THE discovery of the lost work of Milton, the treatise "Of the Christian Doctrine," in 1823, drew a sudden attention to his name. For a short time the literary journals were filled with disquisitions on his genius; new editions of his works and new compilations of his life were published. But the new-found book having in itself less attraction than any other work of Milton, the curiosity of the public as quickly subsided, and left the poet to the enjoyment of his permanent fame, or to such increase or abatement of it only as is incidental to a sublime genius, quite independent of the momentary challenge of universal attention to his claims.

But, if the new and temporary renown of the poet is silent again, it is nevertheless true that he has gained in this age some increase of permanent praise. The fame of a great man is not rigid and stony like his bust. It changes with time. It needs time to give it due perspective. It was very easy to remark an altered tone in the criticism when Milton reappeared as an author, fifteen years ago, from any that had been bestowed on the same subject be

* The Poetical Works of John Milton. A new edition. 2 vols., 8vo. Boston Hilliard, Gray & Co. 1836.

fore. It implied merit indisputable and illustrious; yet so near to the modern mind as to be still alive and life-giving. The aspect of Milton, to this generation, will be part of the history of the nineteenth century. There is no name in literature between his age and ours that rises into any approach to his own. And as a man's fame, of course, characterizes those who give it as much as him who receives it, the new criticism indicated a change in the public taste, and a change which the poet himself might claim to have wrought.

The reputation of Milton had already undergone one or two revolutions long anterior to its recent aspects. In his lifetime he was little or not at all known as a poet, but obtained great respect from his contemporaries as an accomplished scholar and a formidable controvertist. His poem fell unregarded among his countrymen. His prose writings, especially the "Defence of the English People," seem to have been read with avidity. These tracts are remarkable compositions. They are earnest, spiritual, rich with allusion, sparkling with innumerable ornaments; but as writings designed to gain a practical point they fail. They are not effective like similar productions of Swift and Burke; or, like what became also controversial tracts, several masterly speeches in the history of the American Congress. Milton seldom deigns a glance at the obstacles that are to be overcome before that which he proposes can be done. There is no attempt to conciliate-no mediate, no preparatory course suggested-but, peremptory and impassioned, he demands on the instant an ideal justice. Therein they are discriminated from modern writings, in which a regard. to the actual is all but universal.

Their rhetorical excellence must also suffer some deduction. They have no perfectness. These writings are wonderful for the truth, the learning, the subtilty and pomp of the language; but the whole is sacrificed to the particular. Eager to do fit justice to each thought, he does not subordinate it so as to project the main argument. He writes while he is heated; the piece shows all the rambles and resources of indignation; but he has never integrated the parts of the argument in his mind. The reader is fatigued with admiration, but is not yet master of the subject.

Two of his pieces may be excepted from this description, one for its faults, the other for its excellence. The "Defence of the People of England," on which his contemporary fame was founded, is, when divested of its pure Latinity, the worst of his works. Only its general aim and a few elevated passages can save it. We could be well content if the flames to which it was condemned at Paris, at Toulouse, and at London, had utterly consumed it. The lover of his genius will always regret that he should not have taken counsel of his own lofty heart at this, as at other times, and have written from the deep convictions of love and right which are the foundations of civil liberty. There is little poetry or prophecy in this mean and ribald scolding. To insult Salmasius, not to acquit England, is the main design. What under heaven had Madame de Saumaise, or the manner of living of Saumaise, or Salmasius, or his blunders of grammar, or his niceties of diction, to do with the solemn question whether Charles Stuart had been rightly slain? Though it evinces learning and critical skill, yet, as an historical argument, it can not be valued with similar disquisitions of Robertson and Hallam, and even less celebrated

scholars. But, when he comes to speak of the reason of the thing, then he always recovers himself. The voice of the mob is silent, and Milton speaks. And the peroration in which he implores his countrymen to refute this adversary by their great deeds is in a just spirit. The other piece is his "Areopagitica," the discourse addressed to the Parliament in favor of removing the censorship of the press-the most splendid of his prose works. It is, as Luther said of one of Melanchthon's writings, " alive, hath hands and feet -and not like Erasmus's sentences, which were made, not grown." The weight of the thought is equaled by the vivacity of the expression, and it cheers as well as teaches. This tract is far the best known and the most read of all, and is still a magazine of reasons for the freedom of the press. It is valuable in history as an argument addressed to a government to produce a practical end, and plainly presupposes a very peculiar state of society.

But deeply as that peculiar state of society, in which and for which Milton wrote, has engraved itself in the remembrance of the world, it shares the destiny which overtakes everything local and personal in nature; and the accidental facts, on which a battle of principles was fought, have already passed, or are fast passing, into oblivion. We have lost all interest in Milton as the redoubted disputant of a sect; but by his own innate worth this man has steadily risen in the world's reverence, and occupies a more imposing place in the mind of men at this hour than ever before.

It is the aspect which he presents to this generation that alone concerns us. Milton, the controvertist, has lost his popularity long ago; and, if we skip the pages of "Paradise