No timid navigator, skirting along the shores and headlands, but a bold, adventurous spirit, he pushed forth upon a wild, tempestuous sea of troubles, with murky night of ignorance and superstition surrounding him. The “Telemachus” of Fénelon, might have been the “first dim promise of a great deliverance, the undeveloped germ of the charter of the code,” for the whole French people. But in these writings of Milton, we have a _full_ and manly assertion of those rights and duties which all men owe one to the other, and all to society, and which are far, far beyond the simple truths conveyed in that beautiful and easy fiction. Well might the French monarch have “the Defense” burned by the common hangman! Well might he for whom “a million peasants starved to build Versailles,” look down with horror and fear upon that work, for in it were truths which have roused up men to assert their rights. It was the vindication of a noble people, who had trampled under their feet the yoke that oppressed them, and had brought to punishment the tyrant who reigned over them. These works and the events that produced them have an interest to us. Englishmen may slight them, but we look on them with exultation—they are associated with our own history—they are connected with our own family legends—and as they record the mighty struggle of the mighty with the powers and principalities of this earth, they should be reverenced and held sacred by us; they should be our household companions, as they were of those men whose blood now warms the hearts of an empire of freemen, who boast their lineage from a prouder source than kings—the Puritans of New England. The men of that Revolution have never been fully understood. He who would wish to know the justice of their cause, let him read Milton, and let him read the real documents of the times. They have been abused and misrepresented by most historians. Mr. Bancroft, in his History of his Country, has comprehended these martyrs in the cause of democratic rights, and dared to tell the truth concerning them. They and theirs were the settlers of this country. From them came the mighty forest of sturdy oaks, which in years after were to breast the storm of royal oppression and wrath, in this their refuge; and from which tempest we—WE THE PEOPLE, came out gloriously triumphant! Think not ill of them. Tread lightly upon their memories as you would upon their ashes. They who perished upon the scaffold—they who found a home here—they who died upon the field in England, or worn out with anxiety and public care, sank to rest forever in their homes—they who, like Cromwell, fought in the field and ruled in the council—and they who, like Milton, have proclaimed from the study that “_man is free_,” have earned names that time will brighten, and have stood by truths that will secure the affections of a world hereafter. -----