be, since it gives pleasure to
you; I congratulate you also on that happy state of mind which
enables you so easily to set aside at once the ambition and the
ease of city-life, and to lift your thoughts to higher matters of
contemplation. What advantage that retirement affords, however,
besides plenty of books, I know not; and those persons you have
found there as fit associates in your studies I should suppose to
be such rather from their own natural constitution than from the
discipline of the place,--unless perchance, from missing you here,
I do less justice to the place for keeping you away. Meanwhile you
yourself rightly remark that there are too many there whose
occupation it is to spoil divine and human things alike by their
frivolous quibblings, that they may not seem to be doing absolutely
nothing for those many endowments by which they are supported so
much to the public detriment. All this you will understand better
for yourself. Those ancient annals of the Chinese from the Flood
downwards which you say are promised by the Jesuit Martini[1] are
doubtless very eagerly expected on account of the novelty of the
thing; but I do not see what authority or confirmation they can add
to the Mosaic books. Our Cyriack, whom you bade me salute, returns
the salutation. Farewell.

"Westminster: June 25, 1656."

[Footnote 1: Martin Martini, Jesuit Missionary to China, was born
1614 and died 1661.]

That Count Bundt's remonstrance on the employment of a blind man in
the Protector's diplomatic business had had no effect will be proved
by the following list of state-letters written by Milton immediately
after that remonstrance. We bring the list down to Sept. 1656, the
month in which the Second Parliament of the Protectorate met:

(LXXVIII.) To KINGS AND FOREIGN STATES GENERALLY, _June_
1656:[1]--This is a Passport by the Protector in favour of PETER
GEORGE ROMSWINCKEL, Doctor of Laws. He had been born and bred in
the Roman Catholic Church, and had held high offices in that Church
at Cologne, but had become an ardent Protestant, and had been for
some time in England. He was now on his way back to Germany, to
assume the post of Councillor to the widowed Duchess of Symmeren
(?); and the Protector desires all English officers, consuls,
agents, &c., and also all foreign Governments, to give him free
passage and handsome treatment. The tone of the letter is even