able to clothe his paradise with its loveliness, and his hell with its terrors, and hold communion with the beings that peopled them. His universal reading had made him independent of books, so that he needed nothing more than to recall them to memory and adapt their information to his own immediate requirements; and for this, the utter obscuration of all external objects is especially favourable.

5. And what though he could no longer behold the changes of day and night, and the bright or shadowy forms which they disclose in such impressive variety as to constitute a twofold world? Had he not seen them all? Could he not remember them vividly? Nay, could he not now invest them with every addition of grandeur or loveliness, untrammelled as he was by the sight of every-day reality, or the feeling that with every day, as old age advanced, the aspect of nature was waxing more commonplace and tame? All that the wisest of sages had written, that the best of poets had sung, and the loveliest of nature unfolded to his view, were but the plastic elements which he now might mould at will, and out of them evolve the scenes of Eden, or the dialogues of the blest.

6. Taking these circumstances, hitherto reckoned so disqualifying, into account, we not only assert that "Paradise Lost" was all the better by reason of Milton's age, injurious treatment, neglect, poverty, and blindness, but that such a poem would scarcely have been attempted, or at least successfully accomplished, without them. In his case they refined, spiritualized, and made all but angelic a mind for which humanity had already done its utter

most.

7. No one who has heard of the "Paradise Lost" can be unaware of its transcendent merits; and therefore, as in the case of Shakspere's writings, any critical disquisition is unnecessary. It is needless also to mention the neglect with which its first appearance was treated, as nothing else could have been expected from political prejudice, as well as the depraved taste of the age of Charles II. It was not till after the Revolution, when the principles

for which Milton had contended so ably were reacting upon society at large, that justice began to be rendered to the greatest and best of epics. This, however, he had anticipated, and the conviction was sufficient to cheer him onward to the close.

8. Besides this master-work, he wrote "Paradise Regained" and "Samson Agonistes," which are only not the greatest of English poems, because he had produced a greater. The last years of his life were chiefly spent in the study of theology, of which the chief result has been published in our own day in the form of a posthumous body of divinity. After having thus lived, laboured, and suffered during a period of which he was so far in advance, he died in 1674, and three years after was commemorated by a tomb in Westminster Abbey.--Comprehensive History of England.

THE PRINCIPAL TOWNS IN ENGLAND TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

1. Great as has been the change in the rural life of England since the Revolution, the change which has come to pass in the cities is still more amazing. At present above a sixth part of the nation is crowded into provincial towns of more than thirty thousand inhabitants. In the reign of Charles the Second no provincial town in the kingdom contained thirty thousand inhabitants; and only four provincial towns contained so many as ten thousand inhabitants.

2. Next to the capital, but next at an immense distance, stood Bristol, then the first English seaport; and Norwich, then the first English manufacturing town. Both have since that time been far outstripped by younger rivals; yet both have made great positive advances. The population of Bristol has quadrupled. The population of Norwich has more than doubled.

3. Pepys, who visited Bristol eight years after the Re

storation, was struck by the splendour of the city. But his standard was not high; for he noted down as a wonder the circumstance that, in Bristol, a man might look round him and see nothing but houses. It seems that in no other place with which he was acquainted, except London, did the buildings completely shut out the woods and fields.

4. Large as Bristol might then appear, it occupied but a very small portion of the area on which it now stands. A few churches of eminent beauty rose out of a labyrinth of narrow lanes built upon vaults of no great solidity. If a coach or a cart entered those alleys, there was danger that it would be wedged between the houses, and danger also that it would break in the cellars. Goods were therefore conveyed about the town almost exclusively in trucks drawn by dogs; and the richest inhabitants exhibited their wealth, not by riding in gilded carriages, but by walking the streets with trains of servants in rich liveries, and by keeping tables loaded with good cheer.

5. The pomp of the christenings and burials far exceeded what was seen at any other place in England. The hospitality of the city was widely renowned, and especially the collations with which the sugar-refiners regaled their visitors. The repast was dressed in the furnace, and was accompanied by a rich beverage made of the best Spanish wine, and celebrated over the kingdom as Bristol milk.

6. This luxury was supported by a thriving trade with the North American plantations, and with the West Indies. The passion for colonial traffic was so strong that there was scarcely a small shopkeeper in Bristol who had not a venture on board of some ship bound for Virginia or the Antilles. Some of these ventures indeed were not of the most honourable kind. There was, in the Transatlantic possessions of the crown, a great demand for labour; and this demand was partly supplied by a system of crimping and kidnapping at the principal English seaports. Nowhere was this system in such active and extensive operation as at Bristol. Even the

first magistrates of that city were not ashamed to enrich themselves by so odious a commerce.

7. The number of houses appears, from the returns of the hearth-money,1 to have been, in the year 1685, just five thousand three hundred. We can hardly suppose the number of persons in a house to have been greater than in the city of London; and in the city of London we learn from the best authority that there were then fiftyfive persons to ten houses. The population of Bristol must therefore have been about twenty-nine thousand souls.

8. Norwich was the capital of a large and fruitful province. It was the residence of a bishop and of a chapter. It was the chief seat of the chief manufacture of the realm. Some men, distinguished by learning and science, had recently dwelt there; and no place in the kingdom, except the capital and the universities, had more attractions for the curious. The library, the museum, the aviary, and the botanical garden of Sir Thomas Browne, were thought by Fellows of the Royal Society well worthy of a long pilgrimage.

9. Norwich had also a court in miniature. In the heart of the city stood an old palace of the Dukes of Norfolk, said to be the largest town house in the kingdom out of London. In this mansion, to which were annexed a tennis-court, a bowling-green, and a wilderness stretching along the banks of the Wensum, the noble family of Howard frequently resided, and kept a state resembling that of petty sovereigns. Drink was served to guests in goblets of pure gold. The very tongs and shovels were of silver. Pictures by Italian masters adorned the walls. The cabinets were filled with a pure collection of gems, purchased by that Earl of Arundel whose marbles are now among the ornaments of Oxford.

1 "Hearth-money was a very ancient tax, but a very unpopular one. It is mentioned in 'Domesday Book' under the name of fumage or fuage, and consequently must have existed before the Conquest. It had, however, long fallen into disuse when it was revived after the restoration of Charles II. It was a tax of 28. on each hearth, or all houses paying to church and poor; and was of course very burdensome to the poorer householders. It was abolished immediately after the Revolution, 1689."-Spencer Walpole's History of England, vol. i. p. 39.

10. Here, in the year 1671, Charles and his court were sumptuously entertained. Here, too, all comers were annually welcomed from Christmas to Twelfth Night.

Ale flowed in oceans for the populace. Three coaches, one of which had been built at a cost of five hundred pounds to contain fourteen persons, were sent every afternoon round the city to bring ladies to the festivities; and the dances were always followed by a luxurious banquet. When the Duke of Norfolk came to Norwich, he was greeted like a king returning to his capital. The bells of the cathedral and of St. Peter Mancroft were rung; the guns of the castle were fired; and the mayor and aldermen waited on their illustrious fellow-citizen with complimentary addresses.

In the year 1693, the population of Norwich was found by actual enumeration to be between twenty-eight and twenty-nine thousand souls.-Macaulay (1800-1859). By permission of Messrs. Longmans, Green, & Co.