(_From the Miniature by Samuel Cooper._)] To come to other fields: there was born in London on December 9th, 1608, John Milton. Educated at Cambridge, he early gave free play to the powers which in their issue have made his name familiar wherever the English language is spoken. Few remember him as a writer of polemical treatises on affairs of the State and the Church, or even as Latin Secretary to Cromwell; but he was an old man and blind when he gave the world "Paradise Lost." On the 12th there died Robert Browning, a poet who spoke to his age as few men have ever done, and spoke of God and the soul, of the here and the hereafter, with a clearness of faith which was as distinct as the robust manliness of his character. [Illustration: SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN (_From the Portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller._)] December 28th is given as the date upon which Westminster Abbey was consecrated in 1065; and on December 2nd that other minster, St. Paul's Cathedral, was opened in 1697. Legend says that the same King Sebert who founded the original St. Paul's also founded the Abbey at Westminster, whilst another story invokes the aid of King Offa. There is, however, clear testimony to the establishment of a Benedictine abbey at Westminster in the time of Edgar; that is antiquity respectable enough to satisfy most of us. A cathedral on this site is mentioned by the Venerable Bede as early as 604; but the actual fabric of St. Paul's has, according to Mr. Loftie, undergone greater vicissitudes than that of any other cathedral in England. The present St. Paul's was begun in 1675 and finished in 1710. Its cost was £736,752. Sir Christopher Wren, its architect, received for his services £200 a year. What were then called "the new ball and cross" on the cathedral were completed in this same month in 1821. [Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING. (_Photo: Cameron and Smith, Mortimer Street, W._)] An old calendar assures me that on the 15th of this month, in the year 1802, "societies for abolishing the common method of sweeping chimneys" were instituted. On the 20th of this month, in the year 1814, Samuel Marsden landed in New Zealand--a missionary anniversary worth recalling. [Illustration: W. E. GLADSTONE Photo: Samuel Walker. THE EARL of BEACONSFIELD. Photo: Hughes-Mullins, Ryde. I.W. TWO EMINENT STATESMEN BORN IN DECEMBER.] [Illustration: The Limits of Human Genius] The Limits of Human Genius _Pulpit at Gloucester Cathedral._ A Sermon Preached by the Very Rev. H. Donald M. Spence, D.D., Dean of Gloucester, at the Opening Service of the September (1898) Meeting of the Three-Choirs Festival in Gloucester Cathedral. "As for Wisdom, what she is, and how she came up, I will tell you, and will not hide mysteries from you, but will seek her out from the beginning of her nativity, and bring the knowledge of her into Light, and will not pass over Truth."