The Commonwealth was no doubt dead as a Republic.  “Pride’s Purge,” the execution of Charles, and Cromwell’s expulsion of the remnant of the Commons, had long ago given it mortal wounds.  It was not necessarily defunct as a Protectorate, or a renovated Monarchy:  the history of England might have been very different if Oliver had bequeathed his power to Henry instead of to Richard.  No such vigorous hand taking the helm, and the vessel of the State drifting more and more into anarchy, the great mass of Englishmen, to the frustration of many generous ideals, but to the credit of their practical good sense, pronounced for the restoration of Charles the Second.  It is impossible to think without anger and grief of the declension which was to ensue, from Cromwell enforcing toleration for Protestants to Charles selling himself to France for a pension, from Blake at Tunis to the Dutch at Chatham.  But the Restoration was no national apostasy.  The people as a body did not decline from Milton’s standard, for they had never attained to it; they did not accept the turpitudes of the new government, for they did not anticipate them.  So far as sentiment inspired them, it was not love of license, but compassion for the misfortunes of an innocent prince.  Common sense, however, had much more to do with prompting their action, and common sense plainly informed them that they had no choice between a restored king and a military despot.  They would not have had even that if the leading military chief had not been a man of homely sense and vulgar aims; such an one as Milton afterwards drew in—­

   “Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
    From heaven, for even in heaven his looks and thoughts
    Were always downward bent, admiring more
    The riches of heaven’s pavement, trodden gold.”

In the field, or on the quarter-deck, George Monk was the stout soldier, acquitting himself of his military duty most punctually.  In his political conduct he laid himself out for titles and money, as little of the ambitious usurper as of the self-denying patriot.  Such are they for whom more generous spirits, imprudently forward in revolutions, usually find that they have laboured.  “Great things,” said Edward Gibbon Wakefield, “are begun by men with great souls and little breeches-pockets, and ended by men with great breeches-pockets and little souls.”

Milton would not have been Milton if he could have acquiesced in an ever so needful Henry Cromwell or Charles Stuart.  Never quick to detect the course of public opinion, he was now still further disabled by his blindness.  There is great pathos in the thought of the sightless patriot hungering for tidings, “as the Red Sea for ghosts,” and swayed hither and thither by the narratives and comments of passionate or interested reporters.  At last something occurred which none could misunderstand or misrepresent.  On February 11th, about ten at night, Mr. Samuel Pepys, being in Cheapside, heard “all