sent, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation; others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement.

"What could a man require more from a nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge? What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and faithful labourers, to make a knowing people a nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies?— 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 mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long abused sight at the fount 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."

And then, finally, he disposes of another fear resulting from the publication of divers works ; namely, the fear of schism, and separation, and the calls for charity. "How many other things might be tolerated in peace, and left to conscience, had we but charity, and were it not the chief

stronghold of our hypocrisy to be ever judging one another? I fear yet the iron yoke of outward conformity hath left a slavish print upon our necks; the ghost of a linen decency yet haunts us.

But we are bigotted and fearful; we had rather the world went without light at all, if the light came not through our casements. Yet God is not confined in his method of dispensing light to the world. He deals out his beams by degrees, as our eyes are best able to bear them; and here, although the Westminster Assembly of Divines held and published tenets most in accordance with those of Milton, he will not have them to be proposed as most absolute. True religion is not in set places, and assemblies, and outward callings; it is not in the convocation-house any more than in the chapel of Westminster. No the canonized creed may be chartered, and a corporate body of Defenders of the Faith may be appointed, but all insufficient without plain conviction and the charity of patient instruction, to edify the meanest Christian who desires to walk in the spirit, and not in the letter of human trust. They are inefficient for all the number of voices that can be there made-yes! though Henry VII. himself, (with all his liege

tombs about him,) should lend their voices from the dead to swell their number. The whole meaning of this immortal performance may be presented in one of its great sentences;

"Give me the liberty to know, to alter, and to argue freely, according to conscience above all liberties."

Thus we have set before our readers some account of the Areopagitica. They have also some of its noblest passages, and most pointed aphorisms. It has been praised, but not much noticed, by Milton's biographers. Sir Egerton Brydges, whose life of our author abounds in citations from his prose writings, says scarcely a word of this; nor does Todd Johnson bestow upon it even a flippant snarl: but it should be lodged in the memory of every young man, whether we regard its political or theological ethics, the magnificence of its conceptions, or its diction.

It equally commands our homage: but the book contains much, highly pertinent to our present political and religious state. Books are now issued from the press freely enough: but the evils to which Milton alludes, and which he prophesied would result from the inquisitorial hand of the licenser, have followed from other causes. How much have we of a fashionable

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pietism of a fanned, and sprinkled, and respectable formulary! It has come to this, that, if you look over a man's library, you may generally judge of the man. There you behold a set of books, the Shibboleth of which he has learned to pronounce. Palestine is bounded within the walls of those few volumes; all, without, is Canaanitish lore: the classes of character, described by Milton, are among us. Without a question, books are excised at many theological custom-houses. There is a timid and treacherous fear in the minds of many; still, truth is not left to fight its own battle through the mind. For ourselves we are no lovers of uniformity; we are not desirous that all men shall be trimmed and squared to our taste we love to contemplate mind shaping itself out in various ways and forms. We cannot say that we behold with great joy the increase of the number of sects or sectaries; because, while this certainly exhibits large national freedom, it also exhibits narrowness and contractedness of mind. That man is much to be pitied, the truth and purity of whose worship depends upon the temple in which he bows. Of course he will seek a temple where no dishallowing rites or mummeries present themselves. Yet even there the good man is

free to worship, if he can feel his freedom-if he can see Jesus-if to him God is a spirit, and present in this mountain, or in Jerusalem, he will be able to lift up his heart, and to adore. It is only, of course, where men, and minds, and books, are free, that sects can greatly increase; and the absence of division, -the tame, cold uniformity, which is the boast of some creedsmen, is in truth their disgrace. Mind is enfeebled and stunted-the priest holds the key to every discussion—it is, therefore, a significant hint of the prevalence of opinion, which is liberty, where temples of varied architecture, and creeds of varied fashion rise over the land; but it is not too much to hope, that the vestments of the Church will at last be woven without seam; the threads may differ in the colour and the shade; perhaps some may be of coarser texture than others, but the increase of truth will be the increase of charity. The spirit of all believers will walk forth in the enlarged dignity of their devout Christian manhood; and we would fain hope, that manhood, and earnestness, the beauty, and rectitude, and love, breathed in the Areopagitica may be exhibited in myriads of lives.