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but, for the present commands His angels to make several alterations in the heavens and elements. Adam more and more perceiving his fallen condition, heavily bewails, rejects the condolement of Eve; she persists, and at length appeases him: then, to evade the curse likely to fall on their offspring, proposes to Adam violent ways, which he approves not; but conceiving better hope, puts her in mind of the late promise made them, that her seed should be revenged on the serpent; and exhorts her, with him, to seek peace of the offended Deity, by repentance and supplication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

BOOK XI.

THE Son of God presents to His Father the prayers of our first parents now repenting, and intercedes for them:

God accepts them, but declares that they must no longer abide in Paradise; sends Michael with a band of

cherubim to dispossess them; but first to reveal to Adam future things: Michael's coming down. Adam

shows to Eve certain ominous signs: he discerns Michael's approach; goes out to meet him: the angel denounces their departure. Eve's lamentation. Adam pleads, but submits: the angel leads him up to a high

hill; sets before him in vision what shall happen till the flood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

BOOK XII.

The Angel Michael continues, from the flood, to relate what shall succeed; then in the mention of Abraham, comes by degrees to explain who that seed of the woman shall be which was promised Adam and Eve in the fall: His incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension; the state of the Church till his second coming. Adam, greatly satisfied and recomforted by these relations and promises, descends the hill with Michael; wakens Eve, who all this while had slept, but with gentle dreams composed to quietness of mind and submission. Michael, in either hand leads them out of Paradise, the fiery sword waving behind them, and the cherubim taking their stations to guard the place . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

THE LIFE OF JOHN MILTON.

EARLY in the reign of Elizabeth, there dwelt at Holton, in Oxfordshire, or near to it, a substantial yeoman, named Milton. An ancestor of this person, it was said, had been a man of some position among the gentry in those parts, but having taken the losing side during the Wars of the Roses, had been reduced to much lower circumstances. The Milton we have mentioned, however, could send his son, John Milton, to Oxford for his education. The father adhered to the creed which prevailed before the Reformation; the son, while a student at Christchurch, renounced the faith of his forefathers, and avowed himself a Protestant; whereupon his father disinherited and disowned him.

But the younger Milton, though he became, in this manner, virtually fatherless, does not appear to have been disheartened. Leaving Oxford, we find him, some years later, in London, where he has so made his way through a scrivener's-or, as we should now say, an attorney's-office, as to have become himself a scrivener. About the year 1600 he married. If we credit Philips, the grandson of the now prosperous citizen, his wife was "of the family of the Castons, derived originally from Wales;" and if so, John Milton, the poet, as born of this marriage, must have had, in common with Shakespeare, a dash of Celtic blood in his veins, and might have owed something, in his higher temperament, to the fervent and imaginative genius of a people whom he describes as "an ancient and haughty race," and with whose ancient and beautiful fictions he never ceased to be enamored. But Antony Wood says, on the authority of Aubrey, who knew the family, that the mother of the poet was "Sarah, of the ancient family of the Bradshaws." We incline to think, however, that Philips, though not so safe a witness generally as Aubrey, was not likely to have been in error on so familiar a point of family history, especially when committing himself to the writing of a life of Milton. Mrs. Philips, the sister of the poet, must surely have known the maiden name of her own mother. It may be that Philips and Aubrey are both right. The mother of Milton's mother may have been a Bradshaw married to a Caston; and if so, the relation of the Miltons to the Bradshaws would not have been forgotten. It is difficult to imagine that either Philips or Aubrey could have expressed themselves so positively in this matter without warrant; and, in this view, we are not obliged to suppose that they really did so. Philips, always a Royalist, may not have cared to give prominence to the name of Bradshaw, and Aubrey may have had a feeling prompting him the other way. Down to the time of this marriage, the home of the Bradshaws had been almost confined to Lancashire and Cheshire, and in those counties intermarriages with the Welsh was by no means uncommon."

Six children were the offspring of this marriage, three of whom died in infancy. John, the poet, was one of the remaining three, and was born in Bread Street, London, September 9th, 1608.

" Masson's Life of Milton.

Aubrey's Lines. Philips' Life of Milton.