The sublime passage, which describes Man’s creation, besides the moral influence and incitement of its main bearing—that Man is “the end of all yet done”—that he is made in the likeness of God—that here only the Father is distinctly and especially announced as consulting and co-operating with the Son—besides the call that is thus made upon Man to revere and guard the Spirit implanted in him—and besides the formal precept with which it concludes, inculcating compliance with the sole prohibition, is, in the following respect, also remarkable, when we look for testimonies to the frame of mind in which the Poem was written. To wit: The passage appears to embosom, in a very few words—in half-a-dozen verses—an entire system of Ethics in the germ, or general thought. Milton appears to lay as its basis the faculty which Man possesses of _Self-Knowledge_, which he seems nearly to identify with Reason. Hence, very loftily, but very summarily, he deduces the general moral condition of Man, and his highest, that is to say, his religious obligations. We must understand, no doubt, that the other inferior obligations are to be similarly deduced. But the bare fact, that Milton _so places_ (and so compendiously) this high and comprehensive speculation in a striking manner, attests the temper of thinking in which the whole Poem has been composed. In such a fact we unequivocally read that which has been repeatedly here affirmed upon all kinds of evidence,—that the _Paradise Lost_ was to Milton the depository (within room at once confined and ample) for his lifelong studies; and in particular, that, holding the office of a Poet at the highest—that is to say, seeing in every one upon whom the high faculties of Poetry are bestowed, a solemn and missioned Teacher to Men, Milton hoped, in this great Poem, to acquit himself of this responsibility laid upon his own Spirit. NORTH. In the Kingdom of God’s Love, to obey him and to promote happiness is one and the same thing. To disobey him and to destroy happiness is one and the same thing. If it were possible for a finite being to see the consequences of his actions as God sees them, he would perform precisely the same actions, whether he aimed at augmenting to the utmost the welfare of God’s Creation, or endeavoured to the utmost to conform his actions to God’s Will. SEWARD. Unable to penetrate consequences, should he have access to know God’s Will—he will by this means have a safe rule of effecting that which the right, loving disposition of his Mind desires, but which his imperfect foresight disables him from accomplishing by his own computation of results. TALBOYS.