Milton would not have been Milton if he could have acquiesced in an ever so needful Henry Cromwell or Charles Stuart. Never quick to detect the course of public opinion, he was now still further disabled by his blindness. There is great pathos in the thought of the sightless patriot hungering for tidings, "as the Red Sea for ghosts," and swayed hither and thither by the narratives and comments of passionate or interested reporters. At last something occurred which none could misunderstand or misrepresent. On February 11th, about ten at night, Mr. Samuel Pepys, being in Cheapside, heard "all the bells in all the churches a-ringing. But the common joy that was everywhere to be seen! The number of bonfires, there being fourteen between St. Dunstan's and Temple Bar, and at Strand Bridge I could at one view tell thirty-one fires. In King Street, seven or eight; and all around burning, roasting, and drinking for rumps. There being rumps tied upon sticks and carried up and down. The butchers at the May Pole in the Strand rang a merry peal with their knives when they were going to sacrifice their rump. On Ludgate Hill there was one turning of the spit that had a rump tied upon it, and another basting of it. Indeed, it was past imagination, both the greatness and the suddenness of it. At one end of the street you would think there was a whole lane of fire, and so hot that we were fain to keep on the further side." This burning of the Rump meant that the attempt of a miserable minority to pose as King, Lords, and Commons, had broken down, and that the restoration of Charles, for good or ill, was the decree of the people. A modern Republican might without disgrace have bowed to the gale, for such an one, unless hopelessly fanatical, denies the divine right of republics equally with that of kings, and allows no other title than that of the consent of the majority of citizens. But Milton had never admitted the rights of the majority: and in his supreme effort for the Republic, "The Ready and Easy Way to establish a free Commonwealth," he ignores the Royalist plurality, and assumes that the virtuous part of the nation, to whom alone he allows a voice, is as desirous as himself of the establishment of a Republic, and only needs to be shown the way. As this was by no means the case, the whole pamphlet rests upon sand: though in days when public opinion was guided not from the press but from the rostrum, many might have been won by the eloquence of Milton's invectives against the inhuman pride and hollow ceremonial of kingship, and his encomiums of the simple order when the ruler's main distinction from the ruled is the severity of his toil. "Whereas they who are the greatest are perpetual servants and drudges to the public at their own cost and charges, neglect their own affairs, yet are not elevated above their brethren; live soberly in their families, walk the street as other men, may be spoken to freely,