achievements, and the demons of the INTELLECT, meantime, in dignified pre-eminence of place—

"Others apart sat on a hill retired,

In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high
Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fix'd fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost.
Of good and evil much they argued then,
Of happiness and final misery,
Passion and apathy, glory and shame,
Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy;
Yet with a pleasing sorcery could charm
Pain for a while, or anguish, and excite
Fallacious hope, or arm th' obdured breast
With stubborn patience, as with triple steel;"

while another squadron rushed forth on bold adventure through many a dark and many a dreary vale, where "parching air burns frore,” and cold performs the effect of fire. This classification was not without intention surely. These may be described as the higher and inferior orders of spirits; and those, it will be observed, whose character we have cited, are doubtless introduced to assure us how possible it is to reason upon the profoundest topics, and those most intimately connected with the Diviner thoughts and things, and yet from these very things to find only the occasions of intellectual sin. It is the intellectual, the internal character of Satan,

which makes him an object of profound interest. To us every proportion of physical majesty, i this term may be applied to so spiritual a being, shrinks into insignificance when we turn our eyes to the vehement passion, the terribl consciousness of ever-corroding misery, the wonderful knowledge of the most intricate intellecual machinery, which the Evil Spirit shows.

And, if the sentiments of Satan are great and swelling, worthy of a being so terrible, so also, his exterior is presented to us in every combination of grandeur and magnificence. He appears, though fallen so low, not less than archangel ruined; he is a sun seen dimly through the horizontal misty air, shorn of his beams; his face is lacerated with no common wounds: deep scars of thunder are entrenched there, —a scathed oak upon a blasted heath. If he is painted sailing at a distance, he seems to the eye like a fleet hanging upon the clouds.— If he stands motionless, he burns like a comet,

"That fires the length of Ophiucus huge

In the Arctic sky, and from his horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war:"

or, when he dares the vast vacuity of chaos, and swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or

flies amidst the hollow dark, his wings are as sail-broad fans; he rises audacious, as in a cloudy chair; and, in the surging smoke uplifted, spurns the ground: and when he escapes from the "palpable obscure," he springs upward like a pyramid of fire. All these are tremendous figures. The fancy labours after them, in vain, to reach the grandeur of which the poet presents the outline. All the conceptions have the most awful boldness. When he appears before us first, "prone on the flood,” he is even like some night-foundered skiff upon the Norway foam and, when he strides over the burning marl of Hell, he moves before us so mighty, that his spear shews "the tallest pine, hewn on Norwegian hills," only like a wand by its side. When he enters Eden, he creeps along like a low black mist; and when he tempts Eve in the form of a serpent, with what life and magnificence does the terrible, yet magnificent creature rise before our eyes!

"Not with indented wave

Prone on the ground, as since; but on his rear,
Circular base of rising folds, that towered
Fold above fold, a surging maze! his head
Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes
With burnish'd neck of verdant gold, erect
Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass
Floated redundant: pleasing was his shape

And lovely; never since of serpent kind
Lovelier.

With track oblique

At first as one who sought access, but feared
To interrupt, sidelong he works his way;
As when a ship, by skilful steersman wrought
Nigh river's mouth or foreland, when the wind
Veers oft, as oft so steers, and shifts her sail,
So varied he, and of his tortuous train
Curl'd many a wanton wreath in sight of Eve,
To lure her eye: she busy'd, heard the sound
Of rustling leaves, but minded not, as used
To such disport before her through the field
From ev'ry beast; more duteous at her call
Than at Circean call the herd disguised.
He bolder now, uncall'd, before her stood;
But as in gaze admiring, oft he bow'd

His turret crest and sleek enamell'd neck,
Fawning, and lick'd the ground whereon she trod."

These figures all present Satan before us, in whatever attitude, most stupendous in his proportions. The mind of the reader is constantly on the stretch; and although some critics may take exception to the monstrous proportions of the Lost One's greatness, every careful reader must find a healthful and vigorous exercise in this perpetual presentation of sublime objects combined with such moral analogies. Thus we find how constantly Milton's mind was crowded with the sublimest objects. Size, and dimension appear to have most impressed him.

His imagination we can readily conceive would have been disappointed by scenes which would afford to ordinary minds the most ineffable delight. Most of the great things at which men would wonder, would present no especial attraction to him. We can conceive him feasting far more readily upon the exceedingly minute than the strangely vast. To the last his mind would more readily move, and find little unanticipated. To the former the mind. would turn, not as to relaxation and rest, but to find her impressions and ideas, her territories of knowledge, her objects for the microscopic glass of the bolder power.

Another illustration of this power of protracted sublimity, in which Milton abounded, may be found in the fact, that frequently the poems are images in themselves. Particular after particular is added; every one heightening the appropriateness of the figure. Thus, when Satan first upon his escape from chaos, beholds our globe far off, upon the very outskirts of the solar system, when he walked at large, as in a spacious field, through the Limbo of Vanity;

"As when a vulture on Imaus bred

Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds,
Dislodging from a region scarce of prey

To gorge the flesh of lambs or ycanling kids