ranged round the banner of Charles, and round the council board of Cromwell. How we

identify Prince Rupert with Moloch, frowning, whose look denounced desperate revenge and battle dangerous, rash, precipitate, reckless of his cause, mindful only of revenge. We always think of the stern and designing Strafford in the portrait of Beelzebub.

"With grave

Aspect he rose, and in his rising seemed

A pillar of state: deep on his front engraven,
Deliberation sate, and public care;

And princely counsel in his face yet shown
Majestic, though in ruin."

Did Milton behold Strafford on his trial in Westminster Hall? Probably he did: certainly the prime minister of Satan, and of Charles answer to each other in character. We do not wish to pursue this thought. Those were times of extraordinary men, and Milton sketched the portraits of extraordinary spirits: how probable that he should have seized the likenesses suggested from prominency of character, and given them to his prime actors. Satan, we have seen, is indeed the portrait of himself; But the physique of that terrible being,-who does not see that it was next to impossible not

to find the haughty genius of Cromwell, his co-mate in council,-the most extraordinary genius of military conquest and executive legislation the world had known, filling his soul with a vast and magnificent shadow of what such a being might be in the exercise of purely spiritual power.

We have spoken of the persons and characters of these lost beings as sublime; the sentiments they utter are in keeping with the sublimity of their persons. We shiver as Moloch

assures us

"that by proof we feel

Our power sufficient to disturb his heaven,
And with perpetual inroads to alarm,
Tho' inaccessible, his fatal throne;
Which if not victory, is yet revenge."

But that succeeding most rivets our attention. We are fascinated by the graceful Epicureanism (if that term may be allowed), of Belial, and his solemn reply to Moloch, who, to obtain revenge, would rush upon his own annihilation

And that must end us; that must be our cure-
To be no more? Sad cure; for who would lose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through eternity,

To perish rather, swallow'd up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated night,
Devoid of sense and motion?"

And those magnificent words of Mammon on the residence of the Deity

"How oft amidst

Thick clouds and dark, doth Heaven's all-ruling Sire
Choose to reside, his glory unobscured,

And with the majesty of darkness round

Covers his throne; from whence deep thunders roar,
Must'ring their rage, and Heaven resembles Hell.
As he our darkness, cannot we his light
Imitate when we please?"

The character of the celestial spirits is not so strikingly marked as that of the infernal; and this is a beauty of the work: they are moving in harmony with the law of the universe and of God: their character is distinct, and might even be made the subject of commentary.

We should like to make some remarks upon our first parents-upon their psychological character-upon their physical aspect. How noble the description of Adam!

"in himself was all his state,

More solemn than the tedious pomp that waits

On princes, when their rich retinue long

Of horses led, and grooms besmeared with gold,
Dazzles the crowd, and sets them all agape."

How long we might loiter talking with angels, and winding our way through these groves of wonderful beauty.

There is, however, yet another section of observation open to us, and a wonderful and fruitful one—the Episodes of "Paradise Lost.” The voyage of Satan through chaos, is such an episode, that some critics have objected to its introduction into an epic, especially Addison. But what shall we say to the terrible allegory of Sin and Death? Some have objected, that the conception of such personages is imaginary. Every personage in the poem is imaginary, except our two first parents. How fearfully has the poet preserved the portrait of Death :

"The other shape,

If shape it may be called that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,

Or substance, might be call'd that shadow seem'd,

For each seem'd either; black it stood as Night,

Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,

:

And shook a dreadful dart. What seem'd his head

The likeness of a kingly crown had on."

And, when Sin from her side takes the fatal

key, sad instrument of all our woe, and Satan looks forth into chaos-" the womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave," as the gates roll back, but not to shut again, who does not feel in how fine a spirit of fearful truth—of poetry—this is conceived; and the allegory is concluded in a still more lofty strain. When, after the fall, Milton represents Sin and Death as building a bridge over chaos to the world, to subdue and enslave mankind—

"They with speed

Their course through thickest constellations held
Spreading their bane; the blasted stars looked wan
And plainer planets, planet-struck, real eclipse
Then suffered."

The other great episode of the poem is the progress of Satan through the Limbo of Vanity: this has been extravagantly censured by some critics, as a departure from epical dignity. This limbo is represented as lying beneath chaos, beyond the outskirts of the globe-a sort of purgatory, of—

"All things vain, and all who in vain things

Built their fond hopes of glory."

This place the poet styles the Paradise of Fools. -Hither they come,

M