familiarly, friendly without adoration." Whatever generous glow for equality such words might kindle, was only too likely to be quenched when the reader came to learn on what conditions Milton thought it attainable. His panacea was a permanent Parliament or Council of State, self-elected for life, or renewable at most only in definite proportions, at stated times. The whole history of England for the last twelve years was a commentary on the impotence of a Parliament that had outlived its mandate, and every line of the lesson had been lost upon Milton. He does indeed, near the end, betray a suspicion that the people may object to hand over the whole business of legislation to a self-elected and irresponsible body, and is led to make a remarkable suggestion, prefiguring the federal constitution of the United States, and in a measure the Home Rule and Communal agitations of our own day. He would make every county independent in so far as regards the execution of justice between man and man. The districts might make their own laws in this department, subject only to a moderate amount of control from the supreme council. This must have seemed to Milton's contemporaries the official enthronement of anarchy, and, in fact, his proposal, thrown off at a heat with the feverish impetuosity that characterizes the whole pamphlet, is only valuable as an aid to reflection. Yet, in proclaiming the superiority of healthy municipal life to a centralized administration, he has anticipated the judgment of the wisest publicists of our day, and shown a greater insight than was possessed by the more scientific statesmen of the eighteenth century.