the repression of free and fruitful inquiry. "In the universities," he says, "all things are found opposite to the advancement of the sciences; for the readings and exercises are here so managed that it can not easily come into any one's mind to think of things out of the common road: or if, here and there, one should venture to use a liberty of judging, he can only impose the task upon himself without obtaining assistance from his fellows; and, if he could dispense with this, he will still find his industry and resolution a great hindrance to his fortune. For the studies of men in such places are confined, and pinned down to the writings of certain authors; from which, if any man happens to differ, he is presently reprehended as a disturber and innovator."

Bacon had an unswerving faith in the power of truth, and he confidently looked forward to a time when his philosophical and educational reforms, replete with blessings to the world, would be approved and adopted. The following prediction, whose fulfillment has established the character and mission of the prophet, is sublime: "I have held up a light in the obscurity of philosophy," he says, "which will be seen centuries after I am dead. It will be seen amid the erection of temples, tombs, palaces, theatres, bridges, making noble roads, cutting canals, granting multitude of charters and liberties for comfort of decayed companies and corporations; the foundation of colleges and lectures for learning and the education of youth; foundations and institutions of orders and fraternities for nobility, enterprise, and obedience; but, above all, the establishing good laws for the regulation of the kingdom, and as an example to the world."

(c.) MILTON.

John Milton, the sublimest poet of all times, was born in London, in 1608. The highly eulogistic lines of Dryden hardly surpass the truth:

Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed;
The next in majesty; in both the last.
The force of Nature could no further go:
To make a third, she joined the other two.

His father, as Milton himself tells us, was a man of the highest integrity, and his mother a woman of most virtuous character, especially distinguished for her neighborhood charities. After a good preliminary training, Milton was sent to Cambridge, where he made diligent use of his time. In the following interesting passage, he tells us something of his studies, and the dawning consciousness of his greatness: "I must say that, after I had, for my first years, by the ceaseless diligence and care of my father (whom God recompense !), been exercised to the tongues, and some science as my age would suffer, by sundry masters and teachers, both at home and at the schools, it was found that, whether aught was imposed on me by them that had the overlooking, or betaken to of mine own choice, in English, or other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly the latter, the style, by certain vital signs it had, was likely to live. But, much latelier, in the private academies of Italy, whither I was favored to resort, perceiving that some trifles which I had composed at twenty, or thereabout, . met with acceptance above what was looked for; and other things,

which I had shifted (in scarcity of books and conveniences) to patch up among them, were received with written encomiums, which the Italian is not forward to bestow on men on this side of the Alps-I began thus to assent both to them, and divers of my friends at home, and not less to an inward prompting, which now grew daily upon me, that, by labor and intense study (which I take to be my portion in this life), I might, perhaps, leave something so written to after-times as they should not willingly let die."

In one of his controversial tracts, replying to certain calumniations, he depicts his personal habits as follows: "Those morning haunts are where they should be—at home; not sleeping or concocting the surfeits of an irregular feast, but up and stirring in winter, often ere the sound of any bell awakens men to labor or devotion; in summer, as oft with the bird that first rouses, or not much tardier, to read good authors, or cause them to be read, till the attention be weary, or the memory have its full fraught. Then, with useful and generous labors, preserving the body's health and hardiness, to render lightsome, clear, and not lumpish obedience to the mind, to the cause of religion and our country's liberty, when it shall require firm hearts in sound bodies, to stand and cover their stations, rather than see the ruin of our Protestantism, and the enforcement of a slavish life."

It would carry us beyond our limits to follow the career of Milton through the troublous times of the Commonwealth, and the dangers and sufferings of the Restoration; to speak of his embittered controversies and domestic trials; and to portray him, old and blind, in the elaboration of "Paradise Lost," the cherished

thought of a lifetime. Of this last period, in a poem on his blindness, Miss Floyd represents him as saying, in words of great power and beauty:

I am old and blind

Men point at me as smitten by God's frown,
Afflicted and deserted of my kind,

Yet I am not cast down.

I am weak, yet strong;

I murmur not that I no longer see;
Poor, old, and helpless, I the more belong,
Father Supreme! to thee.

Oh! I seem to stand

Trembling, where foot of mortal ne'er hath been,
Wrapped in the radiance of thy sinless land,
Which eye hath never seen.

Visions come and go;

Shapes of resplendent beauty round me throng;
From angel lips I seem to hear the flow
Of soft and holy song.

Milton belongs to the educational reformers. In a letter to Samuel Hartlib, he has presented his views upon education in a brief but comprehensive form; or, to use his own language, he has "set down in writing . . . that voluntary idea, which hath long in silence presented itself to me, of a better education, in extent and comprehension far more large, and yet of time far shorter and of attainment far more certain, than hath been yet in practice.'

His definition of a liberal education is contained in the following sentence: "I call, therefore, a complete

and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously all the offices both private and public, of peace and war."

"The end, then, of learning is," he says, "to repair the ruins 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. But because our understanding can not in this body found itself but on sensible things, nor arrive so clearly to the knowledge of God and things invisible, as by orderly conning over the visible and inferior creature, the same method is necessarily to be followed in all discreet teaching. And seeing every nation affords not experience and tradition enough for all kinds of learning, therefore we are chiefly taught the languages of those people who have at any time been most industrious after wisdom; so that language is but the instrument conveying to us things useful to be known. And though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet if he have not studied the solid things in them, as well as the words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother dialect only." In the latter part of this admirable passage, Milton emphasizes substantial learning as contrasted with the current, wellnigh empty study of words, which he elsewhere characterizes as "pure trifling at grammar and sophistry."

In the same connection, he protests against the imposition of tasks beyond the strength and years of the