how it happened, but her hand moved the pen which he yet held in his hand, and with her assistance he mechanically affixed his royal signature to the treaty. By a stroke of the pen the fate of England had been decided; and he had become a vassal of Louis XIV., from whom he henceforth received an annual stipend, which he used in gratifying his expensive passions. The tender embrace and the burning kisses of the female diplomatist stifled the rising misgivings of the king.

At such a price Charles bought the love of Mlle. de Querouaille, whom he afterward created Duchess of Portsmouth.

CHAPTER XVI.

"SAMSON AGONISTES." HENCEFORWARD England sank deeper and deeper from the lofty position which she had hitherto occupied. At home, the reactionary party put off its hypocritical mask and no longer disguised its despotic intentions; abroad, the government, owing to its humiliating dependence on France, forfeited what little respect it had enjoyed up to this time. The "cabal" continued in power, while Charles gratified his licentiousness the more eagerly, as Louis XIV. furnished him with the necessary funds. As a matter of course, general discontent prevailed among the people, and, despite the demoralization reigning throughout the country, there stirred in the nation a growing sense of its humiliating condition, which was intensified by the consciousness of having forfeited its honor, and by gloomy forebodings of dangers menacing the security of England. It is true, Charles did not possess sufficient energy to take a decisive step toward carrying out the treaty which he had concluded with France. He contented himself with making

new promises when he was reminded of his engagement, or with underhand half-measures against the British constitution, which he dared not openly attack. An event, not very important in itself, characterizes most strikingly the course he pursued toward Parliament, and betrayed his real intentions. The Parliament contemplated imposing a tax upon actors. The court party opposed this measure, objecting that the actors were servants of the king, and were kept for his majesty's pleasure. On this occasion a highly-respected member of the House of Commons inquired whether they referred to the actors or actresses. This was evidently an allusion to two actresses who were favorite mistresses of Charles II. The king was furious at this insult, and resolved to revenge himself in a manner entirely unworthy of his exalted office. Some officers of the lifeguards took upon themselves the task of chastising the offender. They assailed him in a most cowardly manner, and, notwithstanding his determined resistance, mutilated him by slitting his nose. The Parliament was highly indignant at this cowardly outrage, and, supported by the violent exasperation of the whole country, demanded due satisfaction for it.

The people, however, were aroused to still greater excitement by their apprehensions regarding the restoration of the Catholic faith. The king was not unjustly suspected of leaning toward the Roman Church. The Duke of York, his brother, had already publicly admitted that he had embraced Catholicism. Sir Kenelm Digby, who had meanwhile died during a journey to France, had not unsuccessfully worked, both in secret and openly, for the faith of his executed father. Protestantism was seriously menaced, and religious liberty had to fear the worst at the hands of the gloomy and bigoted James.

The mournful posture to which England was reduced made upon no one a deeper impres

sion than upon Milton. His domestic afflictions added to his grief at the distress of his country. He had witnessed the greatness of his nation, which was now so deeply humiliated. Liberty, for which he had once entered the lists, was gone, destroyed, and reviled. His political friends had expiated their honest convictions on the scaffold or in prison. Perfidy and meanness were triumphant. Moreover, he had grown old and blind, and his own daughters had deserted him. Profound dejection had seized him, and he longed to die. Poesy alone had remained faithful to him; but it no longer appeared to him as a divine comforter, but in a mourning-garb, and with tears in the extinct eyes. He exhaled his grief in a drama which he published a short time previous to his death, under the title of "Samson Agonistes." This was an outburst of his deep anguish.

In the person of the blind hero of the Israelites he lamented his own misfortunes. Milton himself was the blind Samson, derided by the Philistines and idolaters, betrayed by a perfidious woman, deserted by all, and despairing of the mighty God of his fathers. Like this Biblical hero, he had fought and struggled, and now he was prostrate, chained, and crushed.

While depicting his sufferings in this drama, he was cheered from time to time by a visit of his faithful friend Marvell. This honest man was one of the few who had remained true to their convictions, and had disdained all the offers of Charles, who recognized his worth, and sought to win him over to his side. With this friend Milton shared the remainder of his fortune; with him he recalled the eventful past, and he communicated to him his new poem, which was to appear in dramatic form. "Dryden," said the poet, "asked me to write a drama, and I have done so; but I am afraid it has little prospect of being performed at court."

"And what subject have you chosen, my venerable friend?"

"Blind Samson is my hero."

"Blind Samson," repeated Marvell, mournfully.

"Blind like myself, deserted like myself, but full of hope in the Eternal. Thus he sits under the gate of Gaza, while the Philistines are feasting and celebrating orgies in honor of their contemptible idols. Listen to his complaints:

'Oh, that torment should not be confined
To the body's wounds and sores,
With maladies innumerable
In heart, head, breast, and veins;
But must secret passage find
To the inmost mind.

There exercise all his fierce accidents,
And on her purest spirits prey,
As on entrails, joints, and limbs,
With answerable pains but more intense,
Though void of corporal sense.
My griefs not only pain me
As a lingering disease,

But finding no redress, ferment and rage;
Nor less than wounds immedicable
Rankle, and fester, and gangrene
To black mortification.

Thoughts, my tormentors, armed with deadly
stings,

Mangle my apprehensive tenderest parts,
Exasperate, exulcerate, and raise

Dire inflammation, which no cooling herb
Or med'cinal liquor can assuage,
Nor breath of vernal air from snowy Alp.
Sleep hath forsook and given me o'er
To Death's benumbing opium as my only cure;
Thence faintings, swoonings of despair,

And sense of Heaven's desertion.

I was His nursling once, and choice delight,
His destined from the womb,

Promised by heavenly message twice descending.
Under His special eye

Abstemious I grew up, and thrived amain:
He led me on to mightiest deeds,
Above the nerve of mortal arm,

Against the uncircumcised, our enemies;
But now hath cast me off as never known,
And to those cruel enemies,

Whom I by His appointment had provoked,
Left me all helpless, with the irreparable loss
Of sight, reserved alive to be repeated
The subject of their cruelty or scorn.
Nor am I in the list of them that hope:
Hopeless are all my evils, all remediless.
This one prayer yet remains, might I be heard,
No long petition: speedy death,

The close of all my miseries, and the balm.""

"Poor Samson!" cried Marvell, seizing the

poet's hand in profound emotion. "Is there no other consolation left to thee? We must submit, and bear with patience that which cannot be helped."

"I possess such patience, and, above all things, confidence in the government of Divine Providence. Nevertheless, I am in pain, and no one will blame my Samson for crying out under his heavy burden, and praying God to end his life."

"But will you not continue?" begged Marvell;

"that is, if the recitation does not exhaust or excite you too much.”

"Samson's complaints are replied to by the chorus of his Israelite friends, which I arranged in accordance with the rules of the Greek tragedy:

6 Many are the sayings of the wise,

In ancient or in modern books enrolled,
Extolling patience as the truest fortitude;
And to the bearing well of all calamities,
All chances incident to man's frail life,
Consolatories writ

With studied argument, and much persuasion
sought,

Lenient of grief and anxious thought:

But with the afflicted in his pangs their sound
Little prevails, or rather seems a tune

Harsh, and of dissonant mood from his complaint;
Unless he feel within

Some source of consolation from above,

Secret refreshings, that repair his strength,
And fainting spirits uphold.

God of our fathers, what is man,

That Thou toward him with hand so various,
Or might I say contrarious,

Temperest Thy providence through his short
course!

Not evenly, as thou rulest

The angelic orders, and inferior creatures mute,
Irrational and brute?

Nor do I name of men the common rout,
That, wandering loose about,

Grow up and perish, as the summer fly,
Heads without name, no more remembered,
But such as Thou hast solemnly elected,
With gifts and graces eminently adorned,
To some great work, Thy glory,

And people's safety, which in part they effect:
Yet toward these, thus dignified, Thou oft,
Amidst their height of noon,

Changest Thy countenance, and Thy hand, with no regard

Of highest favors past

From Thee on them, or them to Thee of service.
Nor only dost degrade them, or remit
To life obscured, which were a fair dismission;

But throwest them lower than Thou didst exalt
them high;

Unseemly falls in human eye,

Too grievous for the trespass or omission;
Oft leavest them to the hostile sword
Of heathen and profane, their carcasses
To dogs and fowls a prey, or else captived;
Or to the unjust tribunals, under change of times,
And condemnation of the ungrateful multitude." "

Here Milton paused, profoundly moved by his own words. He thought of the fate of his unfortunate friends. In his mind he saw the scaffold on which the noble Vane had bled, the dungeon in which his friend Overton was still groaning-all the banished and persecuted men, his political friends. He remembered with great bitterness the fickleness of the foolish people, who were to-day kneeling again before the idols they had once upset: who denied and derided the principles to which they had adhered only yesterday with the ardor of fanaticism, and who heaped the most poignant contumely and mortification on their former favorites and friends. A tear of indignation and just anger trembled in the eyes of the poet when he continued:

"If these they 'scape, perhaps in poverty
With sickness and disease Thou bowest them
down,

Painful diseases and deformed,

In crude old age;

Though not disordinate, yet causeless suffering
The punishment of dissolute days: in fine,
Just or unjust, alike seem miserable,

For oft alike both come to evil end.

So deal not with this once Thy glorious champion,
The image of Thy strength and mighty minister.
What do I beg? How hast Thou dealt already?
Behold him in this state calamitous, and turn
His labors, for thou canst, to peaceful end.",

While Milton was reciting these lines, which lamented his own fate in the person of Samson, the cold wind moved the leafless trees, and accompanied the mournful words with its melancholy tones. The summer was at an end; the fields had been mown, the flowers were withered, the joyous notes of the birds had died away. A profound, gloomy silence reigned all around. The parting rays of the pale sun illuminated the gray head

old and feeble; blind and sick he sat there, a broken, crushed hero like his Samson; but in his heart there lived yet the courageous spirit of poetry, the unexhausted vigor of the soul. Without an effort he recited his poem to the

end. In stirring lines he depicted at the conclusion the vengeance which blind Samson wreaked upon his enemies, the terrible strength with which the hero shook the pillars of the house in which his adversaries were feasting, and the fall of the roof, under which he simultaneously buried them and himself. He raised his voice on reciting the triumphant chorus of the Israelites :

"But he. though blind of sight,
Despised, and though extinguished quite,
With inward eyes illuminated,
His fiery virtue roused

From under ashes into sudden flame,
And as an evening dragon came,
Assailant on the perchèd roosts

And nests in order ranged

Of tame villatic fowl; but as an eagle

His cloudless thunder bolted on their heads.
So Virtue, given for lost,

Depressed and overthrown, as seemed,
Like that self-begotten bird

In the Arabian woods embost,

That no second knows, nor third,

And lay erewhile a holocaust,

From out her ashy womb now teemed,
Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most
When most unactive deemed;

And, though her body die, her fame survives
A secular bird ages of lives.

All is best, though we oft doubt
What the unsearchable dispose
Of Highest Wisdom brings about,
And ever best found in the close.
Oft He seems to hide his face,

But unexpectedly returns,

And to His faithful champion hath in place
Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza mourns,
And all that band them to resist

His uncontrollable intent:

His servants He, with new acquist

Of true experience from this great event, With peace and consolation hath dismissed, And calm of mind, all passion spent." " Like one of those prophets of the Old Testament, the poet poured out in awful words his grief, his wrath, and his hopes. His form seemed to grow; he had risen and drawn him

CHAPTER XVII.

MILTON'S DEATH.

THIS was the last flicker of his surpassing genius before its utter extinction. Longcontinued sufferings of the body and soul confined Milton at last to his bed; he felt that his life was drawing to a close. His wife nursed him with the greatest devotion; his brother, who did not share his political views, also hastened to him. The brothers met after a prolonged separation, and forgot their political differences, at least during the first few moments. Milton held out his emaciated hand to his faithful brother.

"Dear Christopher," he said, in a feeble voice, "I see that you still love me. How glad I am to see you after so many years; how glad I am that you have come! You will help me to set my house in order."

"I will gladly do so," replied his brother, deeply moved.

"My fortune is but small, for poets gather no riches. I am sorry that I can leave so little to my wife. I should have liked to free her from care; she deserves it by the tender solicitude with which she has nursed me, and by the love and patience with which she has always treated her poor blind husband; but I did not know how to amass large sums of money."

"I understand you have many claims outstanding."

"My debtors are even poorer than I; most of them are political friends of mine, who lost their fortunes at the restoration

"I have no children," said Milton, mournfully. "They have forsaken me. I am lonely and deserted."

At these words the door opened noiselessly. A matron, whose face still bore the traces of surpassing beauty, entered the room. She was accompanied by a young man with noble features. It was Alice, with her son. She had completed the education of the youth at her country-seat, far from the pernicious influence of the court. No sooner had she heard that her friend had been taken dangerously sick, than she hastened to him; but she had not thought that his end was so close at hand. The tears of his heart-broken wife told her that such was the case, Although she had entered as noiselessly as possible, the keen ears of the blind poet had heard her arrival.

"Who is there?" he asked, eagerly. “A_friend—Alice,” replied the matron, hardly able to repress her tears.

A gentle smile kindled Milton's face; a touching gleam of joy flushed his pale cheeks. "Welcome," he cried, profoundly moved, "spirit of my youth, genius of the poet! I knew that you would come, and that I should meet you once more before bidding farewell to this world."

"And I am not alone; I bring with me a son, who has come to receive your blessing." 'Approach," said the dying poet to the young man.

He touched with his hands the noble lineaments of the youthful face, which seemed to please him. He nodded with an air of great satisfaction.

"God refused a son to me," sighed Milton. "I have no children to perpetuate my name."

"You have immortal sons and daughters;

your works, Comus,' 'Paradise Lost,' 'Paradise Regained,' 'Samson Agonistes,' and all those magnificent creations of your genius."

"Oh, they are not sufficient. I would willingly give all my works for a son, a child of flesh and blood, to whom I might bequeath my name, my spirit, and my sentiments."

"Take my William, then, and bequeath your love to him."

The young man, who shared his mother's attachment to her illustrious friend, bent his head before the dying poet and asked his blessing.

"I shall not leave this world, then," said Milton, "without leaving a son in it. God bless you, God bless the youth of England, from whom alone I expect the salvation of our poor country! I depart with the hope that the seeds which we have scattered will not utterly perish. A later generation will harvest the fruits. It was not vouchsafed to us to set foot in the land of promise. Like Moses, we were allowed only to see the promised liberty from afar. The Israelites had to wander through the wilderness for forty years before reaching the sacred soil of Canaan. The Lord will not allow us to perish either. The spirit which He stirred in us cannot die. We may compare the present time to a wilderness, in which we are wandering about without knowing the right path. The people are still dancing around the golden calf, and turning their backs upon the true God, who veils Himself majestically in his clouded heavens; but the nation will surely acknowledge its fault, forsake the false gods, and turn again toward the Almighty."

The sufferer paused, exhausted by the effort; language failed him, but his soul, which was already beginning to free itself from its earthly shell, took a loftier prophetic flight; it soared unfettered above time and space. After a long pause, he added: