tagonists with no child's hand, he does not forget his mistress (as he is proud to call her) Truth. He decks her forth in the most shining apparel; in various passages he alludes to her with the same warmth and feeling as if she were a personal friend.

"Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on; but when he ascended, and his apostles after him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as the story goes of the Egyptian Typhon and his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Iris made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down, gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, lords and commons; nor ever shall do till her master's second coming; he shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection."

Milton's prose has three qualifications which are constituents of the highest order of minds; and, what is the more miraculous, rarely, as in this instance, blended in any one composition.

The first, (which is the stamp and current impress of all his productions) is greatness, a certain lofty tone and bearing which the word Miltonic can alone adequately express. There is, as a single exam

ple, that noble sentence familiar to every reader of English:

"Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation, rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle, rearing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam, purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance, while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms."

With this Titanic loftiness is united, at times, a generous and liberal courtesy towards those against whom he is so manfully striving; he offers them the advantage of wind and sun, and yet comes off more than conqueror. But Milton is not always in this pleasant moodwhen his mind is tempest tost, the unshrived adventurer on this “ of speculation" must beware :- he has blows as well as blandish

ments.

sea

Speaking of the absurdity of appointing one man (the licenser) to be a rule by which every mind is to be measured, he puts the pointed question:

"And how can a man teach with authority, which is the life of teaching? how can he be a doctor in his book as he ought to be, or else had better be silent, when as all he teaches, all he delivers, is but under the tuition, under the correction of his patriarchal license, to blot or alter what precisely accords not with the hire-bound humor which he calls his judgment? When every acute reader upon the first sight of a pedantic license, will be ready with these like words to ding the book a coit's distance from him: 'I hate a pupil teacher; I endure not an instructor that comes to me under the wardship of an overseeing fist. I know nothing of the licenser, but that I have his own hand here for his arrogance; who shall warrant me his judgment?""

And in a subsequent page, in answer to the supposition that unlicensed printing would fill the world with infidel and heretical works which might shake the faith of professors, he remarks severely that, "We should think better of the proficiency of gospel ministers than that, after all their continuous preaching, they should be still frequented with such unprincipled, unedified and laic rabble, as that the whiff of every new pamphlet should stagger them out of their catechism and Christian walking." He laughs at the thought that "all the sermons, all the lectures preached, printed, vended in such numbers and such volumes, as have now well nigh made all other books unsaleable, should not be armour enough against one single Enchindion, without the Castle of St. Angelo of an imprimatur !"

Yet all the more genial elements were deeply wrought into Milton's soul, and burst gloriously through even the thickest fogs of disputation. Even in the following satiric analogy (our last long quotation,) there is a predominating tone of fancy and sweetness:

"If we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, 'we must regulate all recreations and pastimes, all that is delightful to man. No music must be heard, no song be set or sung, but what is grave and Doric. There must be licensing dancers, that no gesture, motion, or deportment be taught our youth, but what, by their allowance, shall be thought honest; for such Pluto was provided of. It will ask more than the work of twenty licensers to examine all the lutes, the violins, and the guitars in every house; they must not be suffered to prattle as they do, but must be licensed what they may say. And who shall silence all the airs and madrigals that whisper softness in chambers? The windows, also, and the balconies must be thought on; there are shrewd books with dangerous frontispieces set to sale ;— who shall prohibit them? shall twenty licensers? The villages, also, must have their visitors to inquire what lectures the bagpipe and rebec reads, even to the ballatry and gamut of every municipal fiddler; for these are the countrymen's Arcadias and Monte Mayors."

Though clothed in the panoply of Hercules, he thus exhibits the agility and graces of Apollo.

But, after all, we repeat that which is most remarkable is the majesty of Milton's English. While listening to its musical and rolling accents we seem to be in some venerable presence, partaking inspiration from its countenance, and wrapt away in the glory of its divine eloquence. There is no pause throughout this brilliant essay in our admiration: no holiday in our worship of the gigantic mind heaving and surging before us.

His first march up to the onset, with a grave, and yet glowing demeanor, marks the importance of the conflict at hand; his opening periods fall on the ear like the heavy peal of a distant organ, collecting its music for a noble oratorio. And when he has lifted us into the highest elevations of his question, he descends upon his quarry

with an overpowering talon; his prey is secured; his adversary is at once thrown into chains. But Milton can force merriment as well as matter of moment from controversy; the execution of his enemy does not, therefore, take place forthwith—but he is reserved for awhile as the victim of mockery and sport. With a torturing dexterity Milton probes the angriest wounds in his flesh, and tents again and again the sore spots; he is the chirurgeon of satire the Sir Everard Home of disputation. And when the reader of the Areopagitica is about to pronounce him all this, he bursts forth with one of those eloquent axioms which are the legacies of great men to all ages:

"Whoso kills a man, kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself; kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life."

We could expatiate much more at large on this noble composition -the perfection of its logic, the beauty of its language, the poetry of its sentiments - but we leave it-reluctantly in truth - and as we cast a lingering glance towards the glorious structure, we feel impelled to tell you, reader and co-laborer in the mines of knowledge! that if you strive for mastery of mind, for strength and massiveness of thought, if you wish to bathe your young limbs in the freshest stream of your mother tongue and acquire a celestial vigor - plunge into and peruse the Areopagitica; lave yourself in it; and if you are not submerged by its Pactolian billows, thank God that he has granted you a double portion of the higher spirit!

C. M.

SONG.

O'ER the dark sea of life as man wanders in sorrow,
While the chain of existence is galling the soul;
When hating to-day, he looks on to the morrow,
And eagerly counts the life-waves as they roll;
When afar on that sea the last fires of hope quiver,
Like a lamp-light vibrating at every breath;
When the soul would full willingly sleep on for ever,
If the sorrows of life could be ended by death.

If then, like an influence breathing from heaven,
The spirit of woman steals over the soul;
The music that grief from that bosom had driven,
Within it again in its joyousness rolls;
Love lights up hope's beacon afar on the ocean,
Till it shines like Divinity's eye on its breast;
Love, love stills the heart in its troublous emotion,
And lulls the wild storm of its passions to rest.

ALBERT PIKE.

A LEAF FROM MY JOURNAL.

DEVANS had been sitting in my room in his wonted melancholy mood. He had been referring to his own history. With the pertinacity of sorrow he had dwelt upon it so long, that it now seemed as if he thought suffering a privilege, and rather luxuriated in the sadness of his lot.

"It is a strange story," said I," a foundation for a novelist or a poet. Why do you not give it to the world? or do you shrink from communicating it?"

Oh, no- not that; it is so long ago—and I am an utter stranger in this part of the world; but the world would never believe my story. The life of Melanie is so just like the dream an ungoverned fancy might weave, that it would not interest as the reality it is. Besides for plot and incident I should be wholly at a loss."

"Try, nevertheless — I have pen and paper here—the spirit is on dictate and I will write down. From the time you first you now

knew her."

"On the banks of Sugar river."

66

Oh, no-don't fix your residence

say on the banks of a river -that is harmless; it is the only safe mode of expression. If you put in a single proper name, rely on it your friends will each and all appropriate it, without regard to probability or possibility, and as reasonably, be mortally offended with you."

"I have no proper name to put in but one Hale and he is dead. There is nobody to be injured but myself by the mention of his name."

"On the banks of a river, Melanie Devans went every day to the district school, and I, her brother, went every day with her, carrying her blue satchel and two enormous slates, besides my own chattels, that she might have ample scope to pull wild flowers on the way; regularly "cyphering her sums" for her, after I had finished my own - prompting her in the spelling class-choosing her on my side for the "hard-word" exercise and loving her as a brother will love a delicate sister, gentle, affectionate, and grateful. We were all to each other. Our parents died while we were infants, in one day, of the old scourge of the country, the spotted fever; and we lived with our grandparents, a mile from any other habitation. They were aged and precise. To us, even their precision and prejudices were venerable.

When Melanie and I returned from school, we were as sure to find them sitting opposite each other, pipe in mouth, as we were to see the house standing behind the great elms, where it had stood half a century; and to hear, as we entered the door, the same inquiry —

“Well, children, at the head of your class? — hungry?”

We never thought of loving them, or confiding in them. They were too erect, and the house was too still for that; but we revered them. Daily, after eating our bread and milk supper, we strolled off to the banks of the river, to search for nuts and flowers, to listen to the songs of the birds, in the silence; to drink in all the romance of nature, and unconsciously to unfit ourselves for life. I am now what those days of idle reverie have me; and Melanie, she too was warming in her bosom the seeds of her future destiny. But who was to warn us or strengthen us?

The first event in our existence was reading "The Scottish Chiefs." You have read it. I hope you read it at my age; for in no other way can you conceive its effect on a young imagination. I believe I mentioned we were twin orphans; and, till we were fifteen years old, had trodden our small familiar circle, with measured steps, with steady pulses, with little thought of the world, and with so much knowledge of it as could be gained from a forced and unwilling perusal of "Rollin's Ancient History." There was a confused mingling of empires and battles in our memory, and the figures of Cyrus and Cambyses in our dim fancies; but why or wherefore men rose or empires fell, we knew not.

At this time we read Miss Porter's bewitching romance. I borrowed it from a great boy who used to sit in the back-seat and read it, instead of Pike's Arithmetic; we did not guess it was a romance. We thought it all as veritable history as the family Bible itself. But what a new world it opened to us! how we revelled in its heart-stirring descriptions! how bitterly we wept over the murder of Marion! how our very souls were moved at the lonely anguish of the warriormourner! and how we hated the knight of the green plume - the treacherous Lady Mar! Oh, could we hate and love so now, as in the unworn freshness of our first sympathies we did! We were no more daily pacers in the dull round of a confined existence; but we bathed transportedly in the far off past. Our dreams were now rich with the sound of war-trumpets, and the sighs of heroic and mourning love; and our daily talk in the woods was of the same brilliant scenes, glittering with the sword of the conqueror, or dank with the red blood of the traitor. We leapt at once into the first life of the soul-our realm was wild, ungoverned, unintellectual; but rich and vast. And we roamed there with a delight that no after-happiness could equal.

But it is of Melanie I should speak. And yet, in describing my