And in the Considerations on the likeliest means of removing hirelings, &c. and in the History of Britain, this favourite expression is discovered.

The way in which he seeks to illustrate his singular attribution of human passion and a human form to God, is equally extraordinary. "We do not say that God is in fashion like unto man in all his parts and members, but that as far as we are concerned to kuow, he is of that form which he attributes to himself in the sacred writings." A human form must be composed of members, and it is no longer human than when so composed. Neither does the Deity attribute to himself any certain form in the sacred writings. "The Lord came down upon Sinai in thunder and in fire, and the mountains bowed beneath him;" but in what form or fashion did he come? Job heard the rushing of a mighty whirlwind, and a voice speaking in the midst-but unto what may we liken him who spoke in the whirlwind? When any expressions are used in the Scriptures indicative of a particular form assumed by the Deity, they are of course employed to make the revelations of the divine will intelligible to our understanding. They speak to us through analogy.

The pride of reason, though disclaimed by Milton, it has been well remarked by Dr. Channing, formed a principal ingredient in his character. He had erected an image of intellectual excellence, as he supposed, and he worshipped it. How far his theological opinions might have been modified by the learning and argument of Bull and Waterland, or his political theories by the calmer and more practicable systems of Somers and Locke, we do not profess to determine. Our own hopes are not very sanguine on this point, although we know that a different opinion has been entertained by many learned men. Milton delighted to apparel his mind in the panoply of his own wisdom. While he expected every one to listen to him, he manifested very little courtesy towards the wishes or inclinations of others.

Milton was thirty-six years old when he published his Tractate on Education, and the Areopagitica, or speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing. We shall begin with the Tractate on Education.

That he who had already proved himself a visionary in religion and politics should carry the same dreaming enthusiasm into a system of education is perfectly natural. Accordingly his scheme of education is a beautiful and fleeting dream, as impalpable to the plastic fingers of the politician as the earlier and equally splendid visionings of Plato. His idea of the object of learning is sublime. He considers the end of learning to consist" in the repairing the ruin of our first parents by regaining to know God

aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith, makes up the highest perfection." If Plato had lived in the days of Milton, and under the same dispensation, he would have written thus.

The system which Milton proposed was "the likest he could find by reading to those ancient and famous schools of Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and such others," out of which so many illustrious poets and princes and historians proceeded. We know not if the circumstance has been noticed, but it is rather singular that Milton, whose hatred of individual power (except in his own person) was so bitter, should have invested the government of the one hundred and fifty students and servants, of whom his establishment was to be composed, in the person of one. As in the ancient Palæstra, the education of the body was insisted on equally with that of the mind. A knowledge of the exact use of the weapon," to guard, to strike safely with edge or point," is scarcely of inferior importance to the comprehension of the politics of Aristotle and the philosophy of Lucretius; and an acquaintance with the various "locks and grips of wrestling," is a necessary adjunct to the study of Virgil and Socrates.

Well, indeed, may the originator of such a system describe it as tedious at the first ascent, even while declaring it to be " so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of Orpheus could not be more charming.' But perhaps the most romantic idea was the introduction of solemn music between the out of door amusements (the gripings and cuttings already mentioned) and the season appointed for refreshment. Not the "Ayrie-Burgomasters" of that Plato whom he so desired to unsphere, could have imagined any thing more unearthly than this. Even the rewards and ordinary recreations were to partake of the stately Attic character, and to be fashioned as much as possible after the Model of the Grecian masters. In his school, as in his republic, Milton legislated only for persons like himself.

The existence of a class of beings, differing from him in character and sentiment, seems never to have been remembered, or remembered only to be despised. The course of education is not adapted to the varieties of talent and capability, but every boy is to be a Socrates or a Tully in spite of nature. Milton, nevertheless, was so convinced of the practicability of his scheme, that if he had possessed the power, it would have been instantly and generally carried into execution. By degrees what a change would have been worked in our habits and customs. Instead of

the "royal Hamlet" and the gentle lady "married to the Moor." we should have listened to the complainings of the chained Prometheus, and have had our eyes delighted with the choral solemnities of the Edipus and the Antigone. We should not have required a royal academy for our painters, for their works would have been exhibited like those of Apelles and his illustrious contemporaries before the assembled multitudes, and a modern Athens would speedily have arisen upon the banks of the Thames.

Cowley's proposition for the advancement of experimental philosophy partakes largely of the visionary nature of Milton. The objects which were particularly to engage the attention of the professors, were among the most interesting and obscure that could be selected. The ingenious poet enumerates them with singular felicity of language.

"1. To weigh, examine, and prove all things of nature delivered to us by former ages; to detect, explode, and strike a censure through all false monies with which the world has been paid and cheated so long, and to set the mark of the Coll. upon all true coins, that they may pass hereafter without any further trial. 2. To recover the lost inventions, and, as it were, drowned lands of the ancients. 3. To improve all the arts which we now have. And lastly, to discover those which we have not."

This would be excellent if we did not know it to be impossible. We must look to humbler individuals and less imaginative minds for the improvement of our schools. From John Milton and Abraham Cowley we shall obtain nothing but dreams.

Our space declines unfortunately much faster than our subject, and we hasten to offer a few brief observations upon Milton's political character. It has been the fate of Milton, in common with many other illustrious men, to have his name and principles used to sanction crime and rebellion. The republicanism of Milton was the republicanism of a poet. His political life was a pilgrimage to a purer and more ennobled state of being, to which the phantom light of a warm and enthusiastic temperament led him on. The liberty he worshipped was the liberty of the soul. In the Areopagitica he affirms boldly, that "when complaints are freely heard, deeply considered, and speedily reformed, the utmost of civil liberty is attained that wise men look for." He would have scorned the noisome atmosphere of a mob-government. Milton was too conversant with the history of the world not to recollect that the most terrible tyranny is that of the multitude. His beloved Greece would have furnished him with an example. With Pericles departed the spirit of Athenian freedom, and a wild and hot-blooded demogism, generated by the pestilential passions of a dissolute democracy, arose in its place.

Cicero traced the decline of ancient Greece to the licentious character of her political assemblies, concionum immoderata libertate concidisse. Liberty, that golden emanation of the soul of man, so beautiful yet so evanescent in its colours, was dispersed like a vapour before the whirlwind of popular tumult. The death of Pericles was a signal to all the daring and reckless revolutionists of the time. Then sprung up a ferocious desire of change in the legislative body, and a hatred of established institutions among the people. They esteemed the contempt of the lawsliberty, and an universal equality the only national happiness. Eloquence became a prostitute in the hands of Cleon, that tissimus adulator of the people, and men to whom the Athenians would have hesitated to intrust their private property, were promoted to the first offices of the state, and invested with the government and disposal of the revenues.

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If the author of Paradise Lost had been temporarily seduced into an acknowledgment of the superior excellence of a purely popular government, the habits of his own thought would have soon convinced him of his error. But the liberty which Milton adored was perpetually united to right reason, and from her "had no dividual being." Dr. Symmons has an excellent passage on this subject, which it gives us much pleasure to quote.

"With Milton the idea of liberty was associated with that of the perfection of his species. Against tyranny or the abuse of power, wherever it occurred, and by whatever party it was attempted in the church or state, by the prelate or the presbyter, he felt himself summoned to contend. But sanguine, or if it must be so, rash and blind as was his affection for liberty, he was not prepared to receive it from the government of the multitude, or to believe that what he considered the offspring only of wisdom and virtue could be generated by the ferment of an uneducated and unenlightened rabble. From his prose writings and his poems, passages might be adduced to show, that drawing the just line between liberty and licentiousness, he regarded the latter as the ignorant and destructive demand of the many, while to love and cultivate the former, is the privilege of the favoured and gifted few. Coinciding with the sentiment of Sir William Jones, that the race of man, to advance whose manly happiness is our duty, and ought to be our endeavour, cannot long be happy without virtue, or actively virtuous without freedom, or securely free without rational knowledge."-Life of Milton, p. 589.

And be it remembered that these are the words of the poet's Whig-biographer. Then let us hear no more of the countenance and support conferred by Milton upon the radicalism and revolutionism (if we may coin the word) of the day. Let us no more behold his sacred name uplifted like a banner before the intoxicated processions of dissolute idlers and false patriots. Let us

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hear no more the Defensio Populi brought forward in support of the vote by ballot and annual elections. If Milton erred in his opinions, (and in many instances we may be pardoned for thinking that he did err,) it was the error of judgment, not of intention. He loved truth, for as he himself finely said, "Truth is strong next the Almighty!" If he was blind in his prejudices, yet at least he was honest; if he eulogised Cromwell when he thought him deserving of honour, he did not hesitate to remonstrate vehemently and fearlessly when he considered that arch-usurper's conduct altered. Perhaps a nearer analogy than is commonly imagined, subsists between the age of Milton and our own. lived, as his latest biographer, Mr. Mitford, eloquently observes, at a period when "men were busy pulling down and building up; a fermentation was spreading over the surface and dissolving the materials of society." Milton draws a frightful picture of the state of society at that day in the Areopagitica. "Behold (he says) this vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion-house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with its protection; the shop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and heads there sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation." And who will deny the applicability of this description to the present season? During the last eighteen months, has not a deadly blight been resting on all the works of literature and art; upon the poet and the sculptor, the historian and the philosopher. Throughout that period, have not the elements of society, and all the pure charities of life, been gradually dissolving? A change has come over the spirit of the dream, and men behold with other eyes the deeds and works of their ancestors. When were men more busy than now in pulling down and building up, in levelling the stateliest structures of ancient days with the dust, and erecting their own habitations out of the sacred ruins? When, we would inquire, if not now, was the old faith become a forgotten thing, and old institutions crumbling away? When had the demon of lustful appetence and licentious envy more ardent worshippers, or when were his chariot wheels surrounded with a more countless multitude of blind and infatuated followers? Fresh thousands are continually hastening to join in the Jo Paan! which is ever ringing up into the heavens before the march of that giant intellect, which is to subject the world to its domination. Milton grasped at perfection, but not at power; he longed to pass into the Canaan which his ardent fancy assured him was to be found in a well-regulated