The mass of the nation was contented; the disquiet of political plots had counterbalanced the indignation caused by the Papist conspiracies, and public sentiment rallied around the throne; the great national calamities which signalized some years of the reign of Charles II.--war, pestilence, and fire--did not return to scourge the people. No hardy innovator among the literary or philosophical writers threw among the public such brands of agitation and of discord as Lilburne had scattered in spite of Cromwell or the Long Parliament. Milton died in 1674, having been solely occupied since the Restoration with his great poem, _Paradise Lost_, that masterpiece of religious and philosophical poetry alone worthy of saluting Dante in his sublime pilgrimage into the invisible world. The political pamphlets which had but recently served his cause and which had placed Milton in the front rank of English prose writers were eclipsed, if not forgotten, by the brilliancy of that poetical genius which had kept almost entirely silent during the ardent contests for liberty. Cowley and Butler were also dead; Otway and Waller mingled politics with their poetry. {398} Hobbes opened the door to a dangerous school of philosophy, against which Bunyan, a poor laborer and strolling preacher, defended his country without knowing it, by writing in the depths of his prison the "_Pilgrim's Progress_," that strange and profound book destined to take the first rank after the Bible in the popular libraries of England. Dryden alone occupied a brilliant position: his verse and prose were elegant, powerful, rich, and energetic; but personally he was often corrupt, without principle and without respect for himself or for his fame, as his pretended conversion to Catholicism subsequently proved. Minds were contemplative without being active: the revolution and the Republic had not been propitious to literary development; while the Restoration had profited by the leisure of Milton, it did not at first realize his value; it was during a period of intellectual calm as well as of political quiet that James II. ascended the throne. The treaty of Ratisbon gave Europe hope for some relaxation of the ambition of Louis XIV. The Emperor and Spain had accepted his new conquests, "recognizing" said the Marquis de la Fare, "that the empire of the French was a necessary evil to the other nations." After so many and such cruel blows, a moment of calm seemed to rest upon the world.