evening, day after day, into the consequences. Lo! into that life which he had hoped to make worthy of the God who gave it, a pattern life, a great poem within hose azure fitness other poems should arise to spin their gleaming courses--into this life what had he imported? Not the solace and bliss of a kindred soul's society, which had been his intent and dream; but a darkness, a disturbance, a marring melancholy, a daily and hourly debasement, a coinhabiting mischief! It was enough, he says, to drive a man "at last, through murmuring and despair, to thoughts of Atheism." But was there no remedy? Ah! in the very power of putting this question lay the advantage of the strong man over the weak Oxfordshire girl. He could reason, he could delve into the subject, he could revolve it intellectually. What if the plight in which he found himself were no necessary and irremediable evil? What if the permanence of marriage once contracted between two persons utterly unsuitable for each other were no decree of God, no real requirement of religion or of social well-being, but a mere superstitious and fallacious tradition, a stupid and pernicious convention among men? Once on this track, there was light for Milton. Out of his own private mishap there came the suggestion of a great enterprise. He would thunder, if not the mishap itself, at least its public significance, out upon the world. He would rouse his countrymen on the whole subject of the Law of Marriage. Who knew but his voice might be heard? Who knew but that, were it loud enough, there would be a response of assent from the whole land, and his new idea of Divorce, albeit the proclamation of only one man, might be carried, with other things, in the current Reformation? There ran a touch of this sanguine temper, this faith that any ideal might easily be made actual, through all Milton's life; and it appeared now most conspicuously. His idea, he was aware, was new; but only let his demonstration be sufficiently thorough, only let him succeed in disturbing the existing apathy and setting the thoughts of the nation astir on the subject, "and then," what?--"then I doubt not but with one gentle stroking to wipe away ten thousand tears out of the life of men." [Footnote: This phrase is in one of the inserted passages in the second edition.] Alas! after the hurricane of two hundred years the tear-drops still hang, multitudinous as ever, amid the leaves of that poor forest!