made an excursion for a few days to Lucca; and crossing the Apennines, passed through Bologna and Ferrara to Venice. After I had spent a month in surveying the curiosities of this city, and had put on board a ship the books which I had collected in Italy, I proceeded through Verona and Milan, and along the Leman lake to Geneva. The mention of this city brings to my recollection the slandering More, and makes me again call the Deity to witness, that in all those places, in which vice meets with so little discouragement, and is practised with so little shame, I never once deviated from the paths of integrity and virtue, and perpetually reflected that, though my conduct might escape the notice of men, it could not elude the inspection of God. At Geneva I held daily conferences with John Deodati, the learned Professor of Theology. Then pursuing my former route through France, I returned to my native country, after an absence of one year and about three months; at the time when Charles, having broken the peace, was renewing what is called the episcopal war with the Scots; in which the royalists being routed in the first encounter, and the English being universally and justly disaffected, the necessity of his affairs at last obliged him to convene a parliament. As soon as I was able, I hired a spacious house in the city for myself and my books; where I again with rapture renewed my literary pursuits, and where I calmly awaited the issue of the contest, which I trusted to the wise conduct of Providence, and to the courage of the people. The vigour of the parliament had begun to hamble the pride of the bishops. As long as the liberty of speech was no longer subject to controul, all mouths began to be opened against the bishops; some complained of the vices of the individuals, others of those of the order. They said that it was unjust that they alone should differ from the model of other reformed churches; that the government of the church should be according to the pattern of other churches, and particularly the word of God. This awakened all my attention and my zeal--I saw that a way was opening for the establishment of real liberty; that the foundation was laying for the deliverance of man from the yoke of slavery and superstition; that the principles of religion, which were the first objects of our care, would exert a salutary influence on the manners and constitution of the republic; and as I had from my youth studied the distinctions between religious and civil rights, I perceived that if I ever wished to be of use, I ought at least not to be wanting to my country, to the church, and to so many of my fellow Christians, in a crisis of so much danger; I therefore determined to relinquish the other pursuits in which I was engaged, and to transfer the whole force of my talents and my industry to this one important object. I accordingly wrote two books to a friend concerning the reformation of the church of England." The noble sacrifice was made--the bard became a patriot.

In the year 1641 appeared his first controversial production, the precise object of which is sufficiently set forth in the title-" Of Reformation in England, and the Causes that hitherto have hindered it, written to a Friend." Our author, it will be remembered, had already attacked prelacy, in his Lycidas; and his hatred of their yoke had not abated in the course of the four years which elapsed between that poem and this work. We shall touch with a light hand the topics of these two books,—which are hardly surpassed in interest and excellence by any of their successors. The exordium of the first of these, full of deep and retired thoughts," sternly, and even ruggedly, but devoutly expressed, characterizing, with some abrupt intermixtures of style, but with great power, the origin and Increase of ecclesiastical pravity, concludes with a passage which is in itself an achievement, and perhaps equal to any that ever fell from his pen, describing the outbreak of the Reformation.

"But to dwell no longer in characterizing the depravities of the church, and how they sprung, and how they took increase; when I recall to mind at last, after so many dark ages, wherein the huge overshadowing train of error had almost swept all the stars out of the firnament of the church; how the bright and blissful Reformation (by divine power) strook

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through the black and settled night of ignorance and antichristian tyranny, methinks a sovereign and reviving joy must needs rush into the bosom of him that reads or hears; and the sweet odour of the returning gospel imbathe his soul with the fragrancy of heaven. Then was the sacred Bible sought out of the dusty corners where profane falsehood and neglect had thrown it, the schools opened, divine and human learning raked out of the embers of forgotten tongues, the princes and cities trooping apace to the new-erected banner of salvation; the martyrs, with the unresistible might of weakness, shaking the powers of darkness, and scorning the fiery rage of the old red dragon."

Proceeding then to the question, he enumerates the hinderances to reformation" in our forefathers' days, among ourselves," in English protestants,-not in Providence, not in papistical machinations,—which had been in operation since the glorious event of the Reformation. These impediments he reduces to two,—our retaining of ceremonies, and confining the power of ordination to diocesan bishops, exclusively of church members. "Our ceremonies are senseless in themselves, and serve for nothing but either to facilitate our return to popery, or to hide the defects of better knowledge, and to set off the pomp of prelacy." Mingled with this dry deduction from our history, of the causes that " hindered the forwarding of true discipline "-(in which he runs over the times of Henry VIII., his character, and the conduct of the bishops, with the six "bloody articles," or as Selden calls them, the six-stringed whip,-the times of Edward VI., his infancy, the tumults that arose on repealing the six articles, the intrigues of the bishops, and the Northumberland plot,the commission to frame ecclesiastical constitutions, the times of Elizabeth, when Edward VI.'s constitutions were established,-showing the unwieldiness of these times, and the impossibility of effecting "exact reformation at one push")—-the reader will meet with such declamation against the whole body and function of prelacy, as would be infallibly successful if pronounced before any modern auditory.

The hinderers of reformation in his own times are "distinguished" into three sorts :1. Antiquitarians (not Antiquarians, he says, whose labours are useful and laudable). 2. Libertines. 3. Politicians. Under the first head, the Antiquitarians will find established the difference between our bishops and those of purer times, in their election by the hands of the whole church for 400 years after Christ, and that in dignity they were only equal to their co-presbyters. Whether antiquity favours modern episcopacy or not, it is shown, 1. That the best times were spreadingly infected; 2. That the best men of those times were foully tainted; and 3. That the best writings of those men were dangerously adulterated. This threefold corruption is proved at large, and most successfully. It seems that even so early as 1641, when in his 33rd year, he was not merely a puritan, but a dissenter from the principle of our establishment; for in anticipating an objection on the ground of drawing the proof of his propositions from the practice of ages before Constantine's time, and the alliance between the temporal and spiritual power, he says, "I am not of opinion to think the church a vine in this respect, because, as they take it, she cannot subsist without clasping about the elm of worldly strength and felicity, as if the heavenly city could not support itself without the props and buttresses of secular authority." His object, however, was reformation, not subversion, and therefore he did not carry this principle out. The character and conduct of Constantine are examined, and Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto, are quoted, to show, that it may be concluded for a received opinion, even among men professing the Romish church, "that Constantine marred the church." The last topic in which he deals with the antiquitarian at his own weapon, respects the estimation which the ancients of the purer times had of antiquity; and he demonstrates with great learning, that they acknowledge the all-sufficiency of the Scriptures, and refer all decision of controversy, whether in doctrine or discipline, to them. Paragraphs of amazing energy and incomparable beauty will be found under this head, and we may well exclaim with the writer, "Now, sir, for the

love of holy reformation, what can be said more against these importunate clients of antiquity, than she herself, their patroness, hath said?" He exposes the drift of those who call for antiquity:-" they fear the plain field of the Scriptures; the chase is too hot; they seek the dark, the bushy, the tangled forest; they would imbosk: they feel themselves strook in the transparent streams of divine truth; they would plunge, and tumble, and think to lie hid in the foul weeds and muddy waters, where no plummet can reach the bottom. But let them beat themselves like whales, and spend their oil till they be dragged ashore: though wherefore should the ministers give them so much line for shifts and delays? wherefore should they not urge only the gospel, and hold it ever in their faces like a mirror of diamond, till it dazzle and pierce their misty eyeballs? maintaining it the honour of its absolute sufficiency and supremacy inviolable."

The Libertines, the second class of hinderers, as they would object to all discipline,—“ the dear and tender discipline of a father, the sociable and loving reproof of a brother, the bosom admonition of a friend," he leaves them with the merry friar in Chaucer, and refers the political discourse of episcopacy to a second book, which we will proceed to examine. It is throughout one strain of wisdom and eloquence. In it we shall find set forth the evils which compel subjects to chastise rulers. The springs of a series of past and approaching disasters to church and king, and people, are laid bare. The wisdom of the sage and the poet is upon him. If ever the noble language of Cowper, his warmest admirer, were applicable to humanity, it is to our author.—

A terrible sagacity informs
The poet's heart.

The introductory remarks upon the art of governing and ruling nations, and its general perversion in Christian commonwealths, will well repay the attention of our countrymen at the present time; and the principles throughout this book, by which he tries the third and last hinderers of reformation, namely, the Politicians, who assert that it stands not with 'reasons of state,” are not affected by the lapse of centuries, and though intended for the night reverend fathers in God, the bishops, will apply as well now as heretofore, both to them, and to every thing else that requires reform. "Alas, sir! a commonwealth ought to be but as one huge Christian personage, one mighty growth and stature of an honest man, as big and compact in virtue as in body; for look what the grounds and causes are of single happiness to one man, the same ye shall find them to a whole state, as Aristotle, both in his Ethics and Politics, from the principles of reason, lays down: by consequence, therefore, that which is good and agreeable to monarchy, will appear soonest to be so, by being god and agreeable to the true welfare of every Christian; and that which can be justly proved hurtful and offensive to every true Christian, will be evinced to be alike hurtful to monarchy: for God forbid that we should separate and distinguish the end and good of a monarch from the end and good of the monarchy, or of that, from Christianity. How then this third and last sort that hinder reformation, will justify that it stands not with reason of state, I much muse; for certain I am, the Bible is shut against them, as certain that neither Plato nor Aristotle is for their turns."

The schools of Loyola, with his Jesuits, are then summoned into the field; and out of them, the "Politicians" allege, 1. That the church-government must be conformable to the civil polity; next, That no form of church-government is agreeable to monarchy, but that of bishops. The first objection is annihilated in a single paragraph, which it would be well for the peace of the country, for our statesmen, who have ever so much at heart the honour of the church, to take note of. The second falls to pieces naturally, the first being confuted. Yet "to give them," says our author," play, front and rear, it shall be my task to prove, that épiscopacy, with that authority which it challenges in England, is not only not agreeable,

but tending to the destruction of monarchy." He accordingly deduces the history of it down from its original, and amply shows what Prynne calls "the antipathie of the English lordly prelacie, both to regal monarchy and civil unity." The title of one of poor Prynne's works, published in the same year as this of Milton's, runs out into an indictment.—In addition to what we have above, he entitles his work, "An historical collection of several execrable treasons, conspiracies, rebellions, seditions, state-schisms, contumacies, antimonarchical practices, and oppressions, of our English, British, French, Scottish, and Irish lordly, prelates, against our kingdoms, laws, liberties; and of the several warres, and civil dissensions, occasioned by them in or against our realm, in former and latter ages. Together with the judgment of our own ancient writers, and most judicious authors, touching the pretended divine jurisdiction, the calling, lordliness, temporalities, wealth, secular employments, trayterous practices, unprofitablenesse, and mischievousnesse of lordly prelates, both to king, state, church; with an answer to the chief objections made for the divinity or continuance of their lordly function." The cry of "no bishop, no king," which we still hear, was a "fetch" from the Jesuits. They feeling the axe of God's reformation, hewing at the old and hollow trunk of papacy, and finding the Spaniard their surest friend and safest refuge, to soothe him up in his dream of a fifth monarchy, and withal to uphold the decrepid papalty, have invented this superpolitic aphorism, as one terms it, one pope and one king." It is plain, that this worthy motto "no bishop, no king," "is of the same batch, and infanted out of the same fears."-" But" (the following passage does not discover a republican leaning) " what greater debasement can there be to royal dignity, whose towering and stedfast height rests upon the unmoveable foundations of justice and heroic virtue, than to chain it in a dependance of subsisting or ruining, to the painted battlements and gaudy rottenness of prelaty, which want but one puff of the king's to blow them down like a pasteboard house built of court-cards?" After the gentle digression, which he calls a tale, (and it is one of the "curiosities of literature,”) he returns to this important subject, and argues it out in terrible earnest. The throne of a king being established, as Solomon says, in justice, he maintains that" the fall of prelacy, whose actions are so far distant from justice, cannot shake the least fringe that borders the royal canopy "—and three reasons are adduced from the many secondary and accessory causes, that support monarchy, and all other states, "to wit, the love of the subject, the multitude and valour of the people, and store of treasure," to show that the standing of this order is dangerous to regal safety. The whole nation, as the innumerable and grievous complaints of every shire cried out, was a willing witness under each of these heads, and our author thunders into the ears of prelates and king, what all the people were panting to have uttered. Each topic becomes a formidable redoubt of argument and declamation, and each paragraph is worthy of attention. Every page, as we approach the close of the work, thickens with interest, and is crowded with all the burning rays of the most impassioned oratory. The apostrophe to England is at once affecting and sublime. He runs over the remainder of his task with such extreme rapidity, sentence after sentence, pealing like thunder, smiting like lightning, driving like a whirlwind, against the proud tops of the lordly hierarchy, that we must fain give up the task we had undertaken into the hands of the reader. The reference to the drift of the "bishop's war" (as one of their own order called it) with Scotland, is tremendous,-" to make a national war of a surplice-brabble, a tippet-scuffle, and engage the untainted honour of English knighthood, to unfurl the streaming red-cross, or to rear the horrid standard of those fatal guly dragons, for so unworthy a purpose as to force upon their fellow-subjects that which themselves are weary of, the skeleton of a mass book."--And the exhortation to England and Scotland to pursue their begun contest for liberty together, is an admonitory conclusion worthy of this magnificent page. On the high and holy ground of discipline he calls for immediate reformation, and after placing this point in a variety of lights, and surrounding it with a vast assemblage of argument, and

answering the objections of the bit by bit reformers of those days, the piece closes in a peroration in the form of a prayer, piously laying the sad condition of England before the greatest of beings, than which there is not a more sublime patriotic ode in any language. We insert the prayer, not merely to save the trouble of reference, but to excite the curiosity of those who are unacquainted with these works, when it is not gratified by drawing at once, as in this instance, upon our author. We omit the anathema, with which the petition concludes, it is a curse which Walter Scott could have extended to three volumes.

"Thou, therefore, that sittest in light and glory unapproachable, Parent of angels and men! next, thee I implore, omnipotent King, Redeemer of that lost remnant whose nature thou didst assume, ineffable and everlasting Love! and thou, the third subsistence of divine infinitude, illumining Spirit, the joy and solace of created things! one Tripersonal Godhead! look upon this thy poor and almost spent and expiring church, leave her not thus a prey to these importunate wolves, that wait and think long till they devour thy tender flock; these wild boars that have broken into thy vineyard, and left the print of their polluting hoofs on the souls of thy servants. O let them not bring about their damned designs, that stand now at the entrance of the bottomless pit, expecting the watchword to open and let out those dreadful locusts and scorpions, to reinvolve us in that pitchy cloud of infernal darkness, where we shall never more see the sun of thy truth again, never hope for the cheerful dawn, never more hear the bird of morning sing. Be moved with pity at the afflicted state of this our shaken monarchy, that now lies labouring under her throes, and struggling against the grudges of more dreadful calamities.

"O thou, that, after the impetuous rage of five bloody inundations, and the succeeding sword of intestine war, soaking the land in her own gore, didst pity the sad and ceaseless revolution of our swift and thick-coming sorrows; when we were quite breathless, of thy free grace didst motion peace, and terms of covenant with us; and having first well-nigh freed us from antichristian thraldom, didst build up this Britannic empire to a glorious and enviable height, with all her daughter-islands about her; stay us in this felicity, let not the obstinacy of our half-obedience and will-worship bring forth that viper of sedition, that for these fourscore years has been breeding to eat through the entrails of our peace; but let her cast her abortive spawn without the danger of this travailing and throbbing kingdom: that we may still remember in our solemn thanksgivings, how for us, the northern ocean even to the frozen Thule was scattered with the proud shipwrecks of the Spanish armada, and the very maw of hell ransacked, and made to give up her concealed destruction, ere she could rent it in that horrible and damned blast.

*0 how much more glorious will those former deliverances appear, when we shall know them not only to have saved us from greatest miseries past, but have reserved us for greatest happiness to come! Hitherto thou hast but freed us, and that not fully, from the unjust and franous claim of thy foes; now unite us entirely, and appropriate us to thyself, tie us everlastingy in willing homage to the prerogative of thy eternal throne.

"And now we know, O thou our most certain hope and defence, that thine enemies have been consulting all the sorceries of the great whore, and have joined their plots with that sad intelligencing tyrant that mischiefs the world with his mines of Ophir, and lies thirsting to revenge his naval ruins that have larded our seas: but let them all take counsel together, and let it come to nought; let them decree, and do thou cancel it; let them gather themselves, and be scattered; let them embattle themselves, and be broken; let them embattle, and be broken, for thou art with us.

"Then amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of saints, some one may perhaps be heard offering at high strains in new and lofty measures, to sing and celebrate thy divine mercies and marvellous judgments in this land throughout all ages; whereby this great and warlike nation, instructed and inured to the fervent and continual practice of truth and righteousness,