OLD ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL 47 CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 62 PART OF WHITEHALL 101 IN MILTON'S HOUSE AT CHALFONT ST. GILES 113 ST. CATHERINE CREE CHURCH IN 1736 157 CHURCH OF ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT IN 1737 163 CHURCH OF ST. GILES CRIPPLEGATE IN 1737 178 THE CHARTERHOUSE 203 ST. JOHN'S GATE, CLERKENWELL 209 SOMERSET HOUSE 239 WESTMINSTER ABBEY AS MILTON KNEW IT 250 WESTMINSTER HALL 274 IN LAMBETH PALACE 280 THE ROYAL EXCHANGE 295 BOW STEEPLE, CHEAPSIDE 304 Milton's England CHAPTER I. THE LONDON INTO WHICH MILTON WAS BORN To every well-read man whose mother tongue is English, whether he be born in America or Australia or within sound of Bow Bells, the little dot upon the map, marked "London," has an interest which surpasses that of any spot on earth. Though in his school-days he was taught nothing of the city's topography and little of its local history, while he has laboriously learned outlandish names on every continent, nevertheless, in his mind's eye, Westminster Abbey looms larger than Chimborazo, and a half-dozen miles of the tidal Thames have more of meaning to him than as many thousand of the Amazon, the Oxus, and the Ganges. To know London--its mighty, historic past and its complex, stupendous present--is to know the religion, the art, the science, the politics,--the development, in short, of the Anglo-Saxon race. Perhaps there is no better method of coming to know what is most interesting in this centre of all English life than studying one of the supremely important periods of its long history, when it was touched by the spiritual genius of one of England's most noble sons. Three periods of a hundred years each stand out above all others since the Christian era in their significance and richness of accomplishment. The third period began about 1790 with the birth of the American Republic and the outbreak of the French Revolution. The first was that one hundred years which from 1450 to 1550 included the beginning of the general use of gunpowder, which made the pigmy with a pistol more than the match for giant with spear and battleaxe. Then it was that "Gutenberg made thought cosmopolite And stretched electric wires from mind to mind." In this period Italian art made its most splendid achievements, and Luther, Calvin, and Columbus gave man new freedom and new possibilities.