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In the old parlour, still decorated, although years
had flown, with the same faded hangings—more
faded now—of dark green serge, before his desk of
ebony, and near a seacoal fire, which threw a brilliant
care-dispelling light upon the features still
comely and unwrinkled, upon the soft hair scarcely
streaked with any tinge of gray, and the bright eye
still clear and vivid as though it were not robbed
of its intelligence, sat that far greater and more
holy poet who, as himself has told us, did not


“Sometimes forget
Those other two equalled with him in fate,
So were he equalled with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris and blind Mœunides;”
but to whose blameless spirit, fraught as it was
with knowledge of his own mighty genius, it was
not given to know that he should no less supersede
in fame, in immortality of praise, the objects
of his emulation, than he exceeded them in the
solemnity, the fervour, and the cultivation of his
unrivalled intellect. He sat not now, however, as

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before, alone—for two young females, not, perhaps,
to speak strictly, beautiful, but still attractive, and
bearing in their pale features undoubted tokens of
nature's richest dower—high intellect—were seated
in the same small apartment. One, placed before
the organ, had just ceased drawing from its vocal
tubes that flood of rich religious harmony which
ever was the strongest source of inspiration to the
soul of her benighted parent. The other, who had
just received a packet from a servitor who was
now passing from the parlour, was in the act of
opening it, speaking the while in a voice which,
though more feminine, and, at the same time, very
similar in its peculiar sweetness, was still less musically
soft than her father's tones of unmixed
melody.

“If I err not,” she said, “this should be from
the hand of your much valued friend, Sir Edgar
Ardenne.”

“Indeed! is it, indeed?” cried Milton, eagerly.
“Dear, spirit wounded friend—fain would I hear
of him. Quick! quick, my girl. Truly my soul
thirsts for his tidings, as thirsts the panting hart for
the cool water-brooks! Is it a foreign letter?”

“Not foreign, sir,” she answered, “but surely
from your friend. It hath for date—`The commonwealth's
ship Jael, now off Spithead, June
29.' I will proceed to show you the contents;”
and, without farther words, she read it out in a
clear fluent voice, her father listening all the time
with a most earnest and unwavering attention depicted
on his pregnant and expressive features.—
“How shall I offer to console you, my most honoured
and beloved friend,” thus ran the letter,
“under the grievous dispensation with which it
has seemed good to Him who cannot err to make
yet farther trial of your excellence. If I should

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set down aught, it would but be, I know, as weak
and whispering sounds when brought beside the
powerful and all-assuaging harmonies which your
own tutored mind, mature in wisdom, and superior
no less far in fervid piety to mine than in the gifts
of science, hath poured forth, in a never-ceasing
stream, to lull the pains and minister to the repinings
of the flesh. Condolence, therefore, I nor
offer—nor would you, I think, receive!—nothing
except a conscience such as yours can bear the
body up beneath so sad a deprivation—and such
a one can do much more, and doth. Moreover, if
in such circumstance any thing can be termed happy,
happy it is that your enjoyments are for the
most part of that spiritual and internal nature, which
change of day or night—of noontide splendour or
of everlasting darkness—can nothing take away nor
yet deteriorate. Truly you have laid up for yourself
treasures `where the moth and the rust do not
corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal.' I
have read through your task, in leisure moments
of my perilous and weary watches—your defence
of the English people—and IT IS A DEFENCE! If
you had written never any thing before, this should
prove you both patriot and poet—should win you
what, I fancy, you, no more than I, esteem at an inordinate
or priceless value—the vain world's voice
of praise—and greater far than this, the approbation
of all good and wise men now, and the eternal reverence
and gratitude of ages that shall be hereafter.
But of this enough! No words of mine, alas!
can remedy or sooth those griefs, if there be any,
which your own high philosophy have not removed
already—and, to assure you of my real sympathy,
they are, I know, even more needless. Of that you
can want no assurance! I would that we could
hold more intimate communion—for I have many

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things to say to you which I love not to trust to
paper—the rather that that paper must now pass
under eyes not yours before its sense can be transmitted
to your ears. But since we cannot converse
freely face to face, as in more happy days of old—
days which, to both of us, are now but a delightful
memory of things that never can return—why we
must even interchange our sentiments as best we
may; setting down what we may in prudence and
with safety, and supplying—each from his own
knowledge of the others' wonted train of thought and
feeling—that which must be omitted. This, for my
own part, I will entreat you to assay to do, bearing
in mind the last important conversation which took
place between us—with my own fears concerning
things and persons of no small weight in England,
and your assurances that those my fears were fruitless
and ill-grounded. We have learned, here in
the fleet, but a few months ago, how the lord-general
hath dissolved the parliament by actual and
armed violence—and now we further hear that he
doth exercise in person all the prerogatives and
duties of an absolute uncontrolled monarch—making,
at his own pleasure, peace and war—signing
and ratifying treaties with foreign potentates—excluding
or admitting whom he will to the great
council of the nation; bearing himself, in short, as
if he were legitimately and of right the master of
the liberties and lives of freeborn, but, alas! no
more free, Englishmen. I may not here disguise
from you that, shortly after the intelligence of his
first usurpation—for such I, for one, hold the dissolution
of the parliament, as I may say at the
pike's point, how worthless or inadequate soever
it might be—a general council held by delegates
from every vessel of our victorious fleet voted an
address to the general, approving of the measure

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which I reprobate, and promising to live or die in
his support. Nor, I imagine, have I any need to
state to you, that neither I, nor a far more important
person, to wit, our great commander, Blake, had
any share or portion in this vote or address—both
of us, for the time, holding ourselves content to do
our duty to our country against her foreign foes,
whatever the complexion of her internal policy.
The flag of England must not float less superbly
now than when it overcanopied the crowns of our
immortal sovereigns of old. But now I will entreat
you, ere I lay down my pen—which I must do somewhat
the more in haste that the last signal from our
admiral is to weigh anchors and stand out to sea
in chase of a Dutch squadron—to inform me at
your leisure of the more intricate and hidden motives
of late matters in the state. Whether this
man hath indeed, by his own daring only, and at
the prompting of insatiate ambition, compassed an
usurpation so beyond all exception flagrant and audacious,
that I comprehend not how even his sagacity
can cloak it in the eyes of men with a fair
semblance—or whether the times be indeed so
much out of joint that these most marvellous aggressions
on the privileges and the liberty of parliament
can be in anywise required or justified on
grounds of hindering greater anarchy and detriment
to England than shall arise from this invasion of
time-honoured usages. Our anchor is apeake already;
and some of our light brigantines, having
slipped their cables, are, as we well believe—for we
may hear their cannon although it is so hazy that we
can see scarce a league to seaward—even now engaged
with Van Trump's rearmost vessels. I send
this with the pilot, who shall despatch it by express
to London. I pray you once again write to me, as
to one secluded from intelligence of all those things

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which are most dear to him. We shall, 'tis very
like, put back to Portsmouth after action, should it
seem fit to the great Moderator of the universe to
grant us victory, to which our endeavours shall be
in nowise wanting. To Him I now commend you.
Valeas, igitur, haud immemor observantissimi tui.

Several times during the space occupied by the
recitation of this letter had Milton interrupted it by
comments to his gentle secretaries on its style, its
language, and, above all, the noble sentiments which
breathed in every line of it. At moments he was
affected almost to the point of tears, and again, at
others, a bright benignant smile would kindle his
whole aspect into sunny animation. After his
daughter had ceased reading, “Kind heart,” he
said—“kind heart, and generous, as kind. We
must forthwith reply to him. He knoweth not,
moreover, how dear and intimate a secretary and
attendant is vouchsafed to us in our diurnal gloom.
Hast thou thy vellum ready, girl, and pens? I will
dictate forthwith, for lo! his letter hath been long
delayed upon its route, and he hath anxiously, I
doubt not, looked for an answer to his queries.”
Having received an affirmative reply from her who
had been playing on the organ, and who now placed
herself beside him at the desk, he commenced dictating
in his wonted voice of slow and silvery music.

“TO THE MOST NOBLE GENTLEMAN, THE MUCH
ESTEEMED SIR EDGAR ARDENNE.

“The letter which you sent to me, my true and
honoured friend, addressed from Spithead hither,
previously to the renowned and memorable victory
of July, wherein not only was the indefeisible and
ancient right of England to be the queen and

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mistress of the ocean waves permanently and triumphantly
established by the tried arms of our stout
seamen, but that most brave and dangerous foe—
during whose lifetime never had the sturdy Hollanders
yielded to us the palm—Van Trump was
laid at rest from troubling us now any more—hath
but now reached me, although frore winter is already
treading hard on the retiring footsteps of his
more lusty predecessor. Grateful, indeed, and
pleasing to my spirit are the kind sympathizings
which you have therein displayed with my infirmities—
great, truly, is the loss of light—the shutting
out of wisdom from one of its most easy and familiar
entrances—the quenching of the finest, the most
delicate, and subtile of the senses. But surely,
under this affliction mighty and manifold, all glory
be to Him who to the shorn lamb tempereth the wind,
are still my consolations, and—truly I can use the
word in its full sense—my joys! First, do I feel
this proud conviction, that, ere mine eyes were
sealed in night, they had performed their task, not
negligently, nor with a niggard and reluctant labour,
but with such ample execution, such overflowing
measure of success, that not alone the cause which
I have laboured to uphold, even to the self-sacrifice
of God's first gift of light, hath been admitted true
in every land of Christendom, and I, its author, robed
in a vestment of such high repute as might compensate
for any loss less grievous, but more the ill-advised
and senseless wretch who dared to strive
against me in the arena of the schools hath paid for
his temerity, not only by the utter deprivation of
all renown which might before have been conceded
him, but by his own decease—perishing of the rankling
hatred and mean jealousy which follows ever
on defeat when sustained by a poor, base spirit.
These things, then, are to me a great and wondrous

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consolation—first, that I, in my degree, have done
my duty to my beloved country—secondly, that to
her the sacrifice hath not been profitless nor the
devotion unacceptable—and, thirdly, that to me it
hath brought that best boon of the world's giving—
that boon to pant for which is, of a truth, `the last
infirmity of noble minds'—a high, and, though myself
I say it, not an unmerited renown. Nor fancy,
my kind friend, that, in my blindness, I am deserted
quite and robbed of natural enjoyments—no! by
the gracious mercy of that Lord who never casts
us into peril, or temptation, or adversity, but likewise
he finds for us a way of escape from the
same; I am so piously attended by the affectionate
and loving cares of my two daughters, my organists,
my secretaries, nurses, and companions, that
less acutely do I feel the greatness of my loss than
it were easy for you to imagine. Besides, long
since have I looked forward to this consummation
of my daily and nocturnal labours, as to a certain
unavoidable result—and poor, indeed, were the resources
and the energies of him who, having long
foreseen a coming evil, should lack the power to
reconcile himself to its endurance, when it seemed
good unto the Lord to send it in his own appointed
time.

“Now, with regard to what you say touching the
difficulty or the danger of intimate communion between
us by epistle—relieve yourself from any terror—
it is a child's tongue which conveys the sense
of all the letters he receives to her blind parent's
ear—it is a child's hand which commits to writing
each syllable that flows from her blind parent's
mouth. Wherefore, whatever you would say to
me, write now, and ever, with all fearlessness and
freedom, as I will answer to your queries. Surely
the matters which have caused so much of grieving

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and anxiety to your most noble mind have likewise
been a stumbling-block to many. Needful it was for
England's weal, for her salvation I might say, that
the self-seeking carnal-minded junto—who arrogated
to themselves the rights and titles of a parliament,
and who, having once liberated, were now
striving to enslave their country—should be cast
forth from the high places of their usurpation.
And by whom could they be cast forth save by the
excellent and most wise person whom I am grieved
to see that you do still mistrust? Deeply, most
deeply was he moved—and fervently, with tears
and prayers continually, and supplications earnest
and importunate, did he beseech the Ruler of all
mortal councils that this cup should pass from him—
but it might not be granted. Truly, had Cromwell
been ambitious, would he at once have yielded
up the power which he for a short time assumed,
to a new chosen parliament, assembled at the earliest?
Truly, had he so willed, he might have
then been king—but no! he laboured for his country's
weal, and he has won it! And again, if he be
now protector of the land, wielding the sword of execution,
and weighing with the balances of justice—
I pray you, how was he so eminently raised
above his fellows? Did he so elevate himself,
carving his way through patriotic opposition to that
thorny seat of power? Doth he sit now upon unruly
and unwilling necks of subjugated and rebellious
citizens? Oh no! But by the resignation of
the free elected parliament—which succeeded that
base remnant over whose fall not one man shed a
tear in England—of all their delegated powers—
powers which they soon learned they could not
profitably wield—into the hands of him whom they
saw—and saw truly—to be the only person capable
of holding England's helm aright amid the

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turbulent and stormy seas of foreign warfare and domestic
anarchy. Remember you how we discoursed
one time touching the possibility of the
existence of republics? And how I, dazzled by the
immortal glare of classic stories, caught by the light
which I then deemed a star—a living star of glory—
but now have ascertained to be a false delusive
meteor—how I contended that, as Rome and Greece
were free and mighty once, so England should be
likewise when modelled to a form of pure democracy?
Do you remember this—and your own arguments
against me? Now, I confess it, you have
conquered—and I, wise as I held myself, was groping
like a benighted traveller amid the ruined labyrinths
and fallen shrines of false divinities. Truly
there is no tyranny like to the tyranny of multitudes.
Till the majority of men shall be, as you
then said, wise and unselfish, virtuous, honest, and
enlightened, till then it is in vain to hope for good
from any government administered by that majority—
that hundred-headed, fickle-willed, false-hearted
monster which is called the people.

“England was tottering on the brink of ruin in
the years that preceded the all-glorious '49, and
Oliver stepped in and rescued her from lying the
dishonourable victim of one tyrant. England again
was falling headlong—headlong into an abyss of
anarchy and vice, and misery and folly—and now
again has the same guardian of his country—the
same great Oliver stepped in, and saved her from
becoming the most miserable slave and harlot of
ten millions, fiercer each one and more tyrannical
than he who paid the forfeit of his crimes upon the
scaffold of Whitehall. Never, in any former day,
were all men's liberties so well defined, so jealously
secured, so strictly and so punctually guarded, as
they now are—never was justice yet so equally

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administered without respect of persons or estates.
Each man of England can, indeed, sit now under
his own vine and his own fig-tree, fearless, content,
and free. Happy, and virtuous, and rich at
home—honoured and feared abroad—succouring
the oppressed in every foreign clime—riding the
ocean in secure and undisputed mastery—shielding
her sons, in whatsoever quarter of the wide
world they may be wandering, by the mere shadow
of her name. This is the lot of England
now! When was it so before? And now that it
has once been won for her—won by her Great
Protector—who shall e'er wrest it from her?
when shall it cease to be? But I grow warm—
enthusiastical—as who would not, that knows him
as he should be known, in praise of this most
wondrous man? I have a boon to ask of you—a
boon which I beseech you—by the memory of those
pleasant days when we two wandered by the classic
waters of the Tiber and Ilissus, when we two
mused among the ruins of the Coliseum and the palace-tombs
of the dead Cæsars—grant to me. It is
the first I ever asked of you, and you will not refuse
it. Peace is concluded with the sturdy Hollanders;
our fleets may float from the white cliffs of Albion
beyond the pillars of the Grecian hero—beyond
the far Symplegades—beyond the islands of the
blessed—over the vanished Atalantis, even to the
free forest-shores of that great western land named
of our virgin queen—and find no flag to brave them.
Sheath, then, your sword. England hath need of
you at home. Return, return, and you shall own
me right in my opinion and Cromwell clear in his
great office; else will I be content that you shall
call me now no longer

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