Our prayer is for the restoration of an ecclesiastical unity, once existing, but unhappily lost, immolated to the demon of controversy.

All good men ought now to constitute a council of conciliation. A better opportunity to engage in this good work was never presented to any than to Dr. Palfrey in his character of historian. In the first volume he has certainly neglected it. May he improve it in those which shall follow. If he does, he will be entitled to the gratitude of two noble nations, instead of the approval of a party, comparatively small, though highly respectable in each.

BIOGRAPHY.*

THE Life and Times of Milton. This title raises great expectations, but no more, we feel sure, than the performance will fulfill. All that scholarship and research can effect have been freely bestowed on this first volume, which covers the first of the three divisions of time into which Milton's life divides itself: the first extending from 1608 to 1640, which was the period of his education and of his minor poems; the second extending from 1640 to 1660, or from the beginning of the Civil Wars to the Restoration, and forming the middle period of his polemical activity as a prose-writer; and the third extending from 1660 to 1674, which was the period of his later muge, and of the publication of Paradise Lost.

The principal topics taken up in this volume, are Milton's ancestry, birth, education, plan of life, Continental tour, and a critical survey of English literature at that period. Passing by, for the present, all other questions raised by Professor Masson, we submit a few remarks on the reasons which deterred Milton from entering the Church, as he originally intended.

It is interesting to know that the sublimest and most learned, as well as religious of our poets, was designed for the Church, and himself grew up with the expectation of serving in her courts.

THE LIFE OF JOHN MILTON. Narrated in connection with the Political, Ecclesiastcial, and Literary History of his Time. By DAVID MASSON, M.A., Professor of English Literature in University College, London. Vol. I. Boston: Gould & Lincoln.

With this view he entered the University of Cambridge, and there made those splendid attainments in literature which rendered him the foremost man of his time in learning as in genius. Why, then, was this good design of his parents de feated? And why his own cherished plan abandoned? Want of purpose or of character can not have been the cause, for of these no man displayed more than John Milton. Nor was it aversion to the duties of the ministry. Still less was it skepticism. Milton had a truly religious soul, and was, espe cially in early life, of a reverent temper. He loved retirement, study, devotion to religious duties, and was of the purest moral character.

Why, then, did he change his purpose to enter the Church? John Milton was deterred from entering the Church by "conscientious scruples." This is the explanation. It is a relief to know, however, that the opposition which at this time sprang up in his heart, and was warmed there till it increased to fever-heat, was not directed against the Church of Cranmer or of White. Milton's life fell on evil days. Had he lived before Laud, he would have lived and died a minister, perhaps a bishop of the Church of England. Had he been born in America two hundred years later than he was in England, he could heartily have accepted and acted on the moderate principles of "our ecclesiastical Washington." Even then, and in England, he could and would have conformed to the Church had the pure Protestantism of Archbishop Abbot prevailed over the antagonistic Romanizing tendencies of Laud. Strictly speaking, it was not against the Church of England that Milton protested, but against Laudism. Before such a man he refused to bow. To such a bigot he declined committing his conscience. His whole soul revolted from the sway of "the little red-faced" ruler of the Church. Milton's piercing glance could not but discern the certain consequences of committing the Church to the care of such a man. He read his character well, and foresaw the certain results of following such a leader. Accordingly he gave up his cherished purposes, and cutting loose from the ancient moorings of the University, threw himself upon the uncertain sea of literature and politics.

The consequences of this change to him, we must consider in connection with the second volume of this work, if at all. In the present brief notice, all we design is to utter a protest against those principles and that polity which deprived the Church of the invaluable services the genius and learning of Milton could and would have rendered her, had her Protestant origin been respected and her liberal standards adhered to in his times.

Nor is the name of Milton the only one blotted from the roll-call of the Church by the black spirit of ecclesiastical and civil despotism, which found its fitting exponents and ministers in Laud and Strafford. Would that it were so! Would that it were not true, as it is, that in the struggle provoked by those born tyrants, many of the noblest sons of the English Church repudiated her walks and ways forever!

To us it appears certain, that had the mild temper and truly catholic principles of Cranmer continued to guide the counsel of the English Church, the Puritan schism would never have occurred. A few changes relating to points of discipline might have been urged and effected in England, as they afterwards were in America, but nothing more. The integrity of the Church would have been preserved and transmitted to the latest times. Her enemies would have been shorn of half their disposition, and all their power to do her evil. Even as late as the time of Laud, had the policy of Bishop Williams, the Lord-keeper, been adopted, no effective opposition could have been made to existing institutions in Church or State. It is true, the policy of the Lord-keeper originated in the head of a statesman rather than the heart of a Christian, and accordingly savored more of the wisdom of the serpent than the harmlessness of the dove. But he, at least, was wise in his generation; and smitten with more than the judicial blindness common to his race, was the Stuart who rejected his counsels and dismissed him from his presence. Williams retired to give place to Laud, who at once became the greatest power in England, unless we except, first Buckingham and then Strafford for a season. And what was the secret of this elevation, as sudden as great? It was that Charles had resolved on arbitrary gov

ernment in the State, and it was necessary to make the Church and Churchmen the tools of his despotic purposes.

James had heartily disliked Laud; was opposed to his elevation to the Episcopate. When pressed by Bishop Williams, he at last consented, saying that the Bishop would rue his request. Ominous words! Prophetic of a policy which would destroy both Bishop and King; subversive of the throne and ruinous to the Church. Laud rose and Williams fell. Laud became not only Bishop, but Archbishop and prime favorite, because he was the most reliable as well as most devoted agent of the Court. Laud had some honesty, considerable learning, and much zeal. These were his good points. He had, however, a narrow understanding, a cold heart, pliable conscience, and bigotry enough to set up a hundred popes. Small of stature, of a rubicund countenance, undignified manner, and excitable disposition, he not only rose to the highest dignity of the English Church, but so effectually impressed his character on the times as to leave his name a synonym for a set of prin ciples which, if powerless to preserve, have never been wanting in vigor to disturb the counsels and divide the unity of the Church.

This appeared in England, and at once. Laud and Laudlike men were the real authors of the English rebellion, and consequently of the temporary subversion and continued division of the English Church. They were so, as much and as truly as the French nobility and Court were the real authors of the French Revolution. As the vices and abuses of the Court caused the Revolution, in the sense of rendering it inevitable, so the rashness and rigor of Laud rendered revolt from the Church unavoidable. It could not be otherwise. No other result was possible, unless Englishmen had renounced their ancestral traits, and repudiated their dearly, because blood, bought liberties. Not that the Prelatists were wholly wrong and the Puritans wholly right. Far from it. In the end, the Puritans were no less wrong than their adversaries. They should have stood by the Church till cleared of all despotic rule and papistic policy, as did their fathers before them. They should not have allowed themselves to be driven into

schism. Nor should the defenders of Gospel truth any where. We must preserve apostolic order as well as evangelic truth. The Episcopate, Book of Common Prayer, ancient usages, and time-honored festivals-all these are inestimable blessings. A part of these things are necessary to a Church constituted on the principles of the primitive Church, and we want no other. We have no inclination to ask whether any other be possible or allowable. Enough that we have this and are not straitened. We have liberty enough, room enough, verge enough. We love to inhabit the house which hath foundations, whose rafters were laid, and whose proportions were planned by the Apostles and Apostolic men. Oh! that all of English origin would enter in and abide there. The door is open, there is room enough for all; and whether the children will return or no, we are sure the fathers would not have forsaken it if it had always been as it is this day, and in this land. One thing more, at least, is certain. As the principles and policy of Laud drove out the fathers, so will they fail to call back the children. Not to the successors of Laud, but to the children of Cranmer is consigned the task of recalling the wandering sons, and recovering the lost ground of the Church both in the Old and New World. Let such men as Bishop Tait be elevated to the Episcopate, and dissent will disappear from England, if not at once, yet gradually and surely. The Church there has every advantage. Will she be wise enough to act accordingly? And even here, encompassed as we are by difficulties of Laudian origin, we despair not of a final, though it may not be a speedy victory; a victory not for ourselves—not for a sect, whether prelatic or puritanic-but for the Church of Christ as predicted by prophets, built up by Apostles, and purchased by the Son of God Himself.