arse and the plumes come forth; and
the tyrant is borne, in more than royal pomp, to a royal sepulchre. A
few days more, and his head is fixed to rot on the pinnacles of that
very hall where he sat on a throne in his life, and lay in state after
his death. When I think on all these things, to look round me makes me
sad at heart. True it is that God hath restored to us our old laws, and
the rightful line of our kings. Yet, how I know not, but it seems to me
that something is wanting--that our court hath not the old gravity, nor
our people the old loyalty. These evil times, like the great deluge,
have overwhelmed and confused all earthly things. And, even as those
waters, though at last they abated, yet, as the learned write, destroyed
all trace of the garden of Eden, so that its place hath never since been
found, so hath this opening of all the flood-gates of political evil
effaced all marks of the ancient political paradise."

"Sir, by your favour," said Mr Milton, "though, from many circumstances
both of body and of fortune, I might plead fairer excuses for
despondency than yourself, I yet look not so sadly either on the past
or on the future. That a deluge hath passed over this our nation, I deny
not. But I hold it not to be such a deluge as that of which you speak;
but rather a blessed flood, like those of the Nile, which in its
overflow doth indeed wash away ancient landmarks, and confound
boundaries, and sweep away dwellings, yea, doth give birth to many foul
and dangerous reptiles. Yet hence is the fulness of the granary, the
beauty of the garden, the nurture of all living things.

"I remember well, Mr Cowley, what you have said concerning these things
in your Discourse of the Government of Oliver Cromwell, which my friend
Elwood read to me last year. Truly, for elegance and rhetoric, that
essay is to be compared with the finest tractates of Isocrates and
Cicero. But neither that nor any other book, nor any events, which with
most men have, more than any book, weight and authority, have altered my
opinion, that, of all assemblies that ever were in this world, the best
and the most useful was our Long Parliament. I speak not this as wishing
to provoke debate; which neither yet do I decline."

Mr Cowley was, as I could see, a little nettled. Yet, as he was a man
of a kind disposition and a most refined courtesy, he put a force upon
himself, and answered with more vehemence and quickness indeed than was
his wont, y