fattened before they could be offered in the market to the Jamaica planters. The court ladies, and even the Queen of England herself, were so utterly forgetful of womanly mercy and common humanity as to join in this infernal traffic. That princess requested that a hundred of the convicts should be given to her. "The profit which she cleared on the cargo, after making a large allowance for those who died of hunger and fever during the passage, cannot be estimated at less than a thousand guineas." [Sidenote: Profligate condition of literature.] It remains to add a few words respecting the state of literature. This, at the end of the seventeenth century, had become indescribably profligate, and, since the art of reading was by no means generally cultivated, the most ready method of literary communication was through theatrical representation. It was for that reason that play-writing was the best means of literary remuneration, if we except the profit derived from the practice which, to some extent, survives, though its disgraceful motive has ceased, of dedicating books to rich men for the sake of the fee they would give. It is said that books have actually been printed in consideration of the profits of the dedication. Especially in the composition of plays was it judged expedient to minister to the depraved public taste by indecent expressions, or allusions broad and sly. The playwright was at the mercy of an audience who were critical on that point, and in a position, if he should not come up to the required standard, to damn him and his work in an instant. [Sidenote: Milton's "Paradise Lost."] From these remarks must be excepted the writings of Milton, which are nowhere stained by such a blemish. And yet posterity will perhaps with truth assert that "Paradise Lost" has wrought more intellectual evil than even its base contemporaries, since it has familiarized educated minds with images which, though in one sense sublime, in another are most unworthy, and has taught the public a dreadful materialization of the great and invisible God. A Manichean composition in reality, it was mistaken for a Christian poem. [Sidenote: The English theatre.] The progress of English literature not only offers striking proofs of the manner in which it was affected by theatrical representations, but also furnishes an interesting illustration of that necessary course through which intellectual development must pass. It is difficult for us, who live in a reading community, to comprehend the influence once exercised by the pulpit and the stage in the instruction of a non-reading people.