With reference to Milton's own case, it is worth observing that the causes of divorce on which he still rings the changes throughout the second edition of his treatise, as throughout the first, are the unmatchableness of dispositions, the unfitness of the wife for rational conversation, her intellectual and moral insufficiency or perverseness. There is no word of _desertion_. I cannot but think that this confirms the view that it was not the absence of Milton's wife that caused his dissatisfaction with his marriage, but that the dissatisfaction preceded the absence and had helped to occasion it. Narration, rather than criticism, is my business in this work; and we have not yet done with Milton's Divorce speculation. At this point, however, I may venture on three remarks:-- (1.) What is most noticeable in Milton, underneath his whole conduct here, as in so many other matters, is his intellectual courage. Among men of thought there are, I should say, two grades of honesty. There is passive honesty, or the honesty of never saying, or appearing to say, what one does _not_ think; and it is a rare and high merit to have attained to this. But there is the greater honesty of always saying, or indeed asserting and proclaiming, whatever one _does_ think. The proportion of those who have disciplined themselves to this positive or aggressive honesty, and are at the same time socially sufferable by reason of the importance of what they have to say, has always been wonderfully small in the world. Now, Milton was one of this band of intellectual Ironsides. Even within the band itself he belonged to the extremest section. For he dared to question not only the speculative dogmas and political traditions of his time, which others round him were questioning, but even some of the established "moralities," which few of them were questioning. It is not at all uncommon for men the most free- thinking in matters of religious belief to be immoveably and even fanatically orthodox in their allegiance to all customary moralities. They abide by tradition, and think with the multitude, in ethical questions, if in nothing, else. But on Milton, it appears from his Address to the Parliament and the Assembly, there had dawned the idea that, as there had come down in the bosom of society misbeliefs in science, imperfect views of theology, and conventions of political tyranny, so there had come down things even worse, in the form of cobwebbed sacramentalisms and sanctities for private life, factitious restrictions of individual liberty pretending themselves to be Christian rules of holiness. Among the greatest burdens and impediments in man's life, he says, were such pseudo-moralities, such "imaginary and scarecrow sins," vaunting themselves as suckers and corollaries from the Ten Commandments. This was a daring track to be upon, but Milton was upon it. He did not believe that the world had arrived at a final and perfect