"The defence of the people of England" in answer to Salmasius's "Defence of the King," had not, perhaps, the right client. It was not the People of England who slew the King. Milton tells his own story of that unhappy reign (in "Eikonoklastes," his reply to "Eikon Basilike," attributed to Charles, really, as is believed, by Gauden) it may be read with more profit in the history of Mr. S. R. Gardiner. Milton declares the charge against the Scots of "selling their king" to be "a foul infamy and dishonour". The Scots, every soul of them who had a touch of chivalry, took up the sword to cleanse the blot, died on the field, or on the scaffold, or were sold as slaves, or were starved to death in Durham Cathedral. There are, in short there could not but be, noble and harmonious and stirring passages in Milton's prose; but poetry was his native language, and his themes were such as to place sobriety of view, and delicate discrimination of good and evil almost beyond his power. For, as Argyll said, of himself, he was "a distraught man in distraught times". Otherwise Milton, the proudest of men, would not have answered railing with railing. Jeremy Taylor. Among the pulpit orators of the seventeenth century, none has left a name more fragrant than Jeremy Taylor. His devotional works, such as "Holy Living," and still more "Holy Dying," are still in the hands of the devout. But it is not easy to suppose that many readers who are not profound students of style in prose often read the many volumes of sermons, works of casuistry, and works of controversy which Jeremy has left. He is not of our world or way of thinking; he dwells, for example, on "special" and easily distinguishable "providences". Now when a tempest flooded a river, so that Montrose's men could not cross and despoil the lands of a contemporary of Jeremy's, Brodie of Brodie, that devout Covenanter confided to his journal the occurrence of this "special providence". But when the river fell, and Montrose crossed and drove the kye, Brodie remarks in his journal that we ought not to interpret the Divine Will, for we may be mistaken. Jeremy insists on his own interpretations. "From Adam to the Flood, by the patriarchs were eleven generations; but by Cain's line there were but eight, so that Cain's posterity were longer lived: _because_ God, intending to bring the flood upon the world, took delight to rescue his elect from the dangers of the present impurity and the future deluge." In the same way Abraham lived five years less than his son Isaac, and Jeremy knows why. "The Jewish doctors" inform him that the idea was to prevent Abraham from seeing "the iniquity of his grandchild, Esau". Later, speaking of other times and lands, Jeremy says that "such fancies do seldom serve either the ends of truth or charity,"--for which he has the highest Authority in the Gospel.