the whole frame of society.  The army rose against the Parliament, the different corps of the army against each other.  Sect raved against sect.  Party plotted against party.  The Presbyterians, in their eagerness to be revenged on the Independents, sacrificed their own liberty, and deserted all their old principles.  Without casting one glance on the past, or requiring one stipulation for the future, they threw down their freedom at the feet of the most frivolous and heartless of tyrants.

Then came those days, never to be recalled without a blush, the days of servitude without loyalty and sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave.  The King cringed to his rival that he might trample on his people, sank into a viceroy of France, and pocketed, with complacent infamy, her degrading insults and her more degrading gold.  The caresses of harlots and the jests of buffoons regulated the policy of the State.  The government had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to persecute.  The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean.  In every high place, worship was paid to Charles and James, Belial and Moloch; and England propitiated those obscene and cruel idols with the blood of her best and bravest children.  Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race accursed of God and man was a second time driven forth, to wander on the face of the earth, and to be a by-word and a shaking of the head to the nations.

Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made on the public character of Milton apply to him only as one of a large body.  We shall proceed to notice some of the peculiarities which distinguished him from his contemporaries.  And, for that purpose, it is necessary to take a short survey of the parties into which the political world was at that time divided.  We must premise that our observations are intended to apply only to those who adhered, from a sincere preference, to one or to the other side.  In days of public commotion, every faction, like an Oriental army, is attended by a crowd of camp-followers, a useless and heartless rabble, who prowl round its line of march in the hope of picking up something under its protection, but desert it in the day of battle, and often join to exterminate it after a defeat.  England, at the time of which we are treating, abounded with fickle and selfish politicians, who transferred their support to every government as it rose; who kissed the hand of the king in 1640, and spat in his face in 1649; who shouted with equal glee when Cromwell was inaugurated at Westminster Hall and when he was dug up to be hanged at Tyburn; who dined on calves’ heads, or stuck up oak-branches, as circumstances altered, without the slightest shame or repugnance.  These we leave out of the account.  We take our estimate of parties from those who really deserve to be called partisans.