visions
of his youth; he had seen the loudmouthed advocates of liberty throwing
down a nation's freedom at the feet of the shameless, debauched, and
perjured Charles II., crouching to the harlot-thronged court of the
tyrant, and forswearing at once their religion and their republicanism.
The executioner's axe had been busy among his friends. Vane and Hampden
slept in their bloody graves. Cromwell's ashes had been dragged from
their resting-place; for even in death the effeminate monarch hated and
feared the conquerer of Naseby and Marston Moor. He was left alone, in
age, and penury, and blindness, oppressed with the knowledge that all
which his free soul abhorred had returned upon his beloved country. Yet
the spirit of the stern old republican remained to the last unbroken,
realizing the truth of the language of his own Samson Agonistes:--

"But patience is more oft the exercise
Of saints, the trial of their fortitude,
Making them each his own deliverer
And victor over all
That tyranny or fortune can inflict."

The curse of religious and political apostasy lay heavy on the land.
Harlotry and atheism sat in the high places; and the "caresses of
wantons and the jests of buffoons regulated the measures of a government
which had just ability enough to deceive, just religion enough to
persecute." But, while Milton mourned over this disastrous change,
no self-reproach mingled with his sorrow. To the last he had striven
against the oppressor; and when confined to his narrow alley, a prisoner
in his own mean dwelling, like another Prometheus on his rock, he still
turned upon him an eye of unsubdued defiance. Who, that has read his
powerful appeal to his countrymen when they were on the eve of welcoming
back the tyranny and misrule which, at the expense of so much blood and
treasure had been thrown off, can ever forget it? How nobly does
Liberty speak through him! "If," said he, "ye welcome back a monarchy,
it will be the triumph of all tyrants hereafter over any people who
shall resist oppression; and their song shall then be to others, 'How
sped the rebellious English?' but to our posterity, 'How sped the
rebels, your fathers?'" How solemn and awful is his closing paragraph!
"What I have spoken is the language of that which is not called amiss
'the good old cause.' If it seem strange to any, it will not, I hope,
seem more strange than convin