kindly entertained them until their own affairs were in a better condition.

The scene which we have been constrained to survey, is most humiliating and confounding. One is ready to say, Oh! that oblivion had in kindness cast its mantle over such disgusting details. The champion of a nation's right, the fearless and undaunted assertor of civil and religious liberty, and the successful advocate of the unshackled press, himself a domestic tyrant! objecting to the restraint with which God and nature had guarded the marriage union, and refusing to the wife of his bosom, the companion of his life, those equal rights to which with himself she was justly entitled. “Yet she is thy COMPANION, and the wife of thy COVENANT: and did he not make ONE?" (Malachi ii. 14.) MILTON and his wife did not, it is evident, understand the principles of the marriage covenant: they were not "one! but two!" Nor did he treat her, so far as it appears, as if she was his "companion," but his household slave! Nor did he fulfil the conditions of the "covenant," into which he had voluntarily entered when she consented to become his wife, a covenant of reciprocal duties, and of equal privileges. His biogra. phers say, that Mrs. MILTON "refused to return;" perhaps she was justifiable in that refusul: she might have been treated superciliously and contemptuously by her husband.

"He wrote several letters to her which she did not answer. It would have been better had he paid her an affectionate visit. He then sent a servant, doubtless demanding her from her father, and then "she positively refused to come and dismissed the messenger with contempt!" Admitting the supposition to be just, that he had sent his lordly commands, requiring her submission to his authority, she acted rightly and with a becoming

spirit. He became incensed at this, and resolved, out of regard to his "honor" and "repose," to repudiate her as no longer worthy his confidence or affection. A husband who could act with this haughty feeling towards his companion, must have strange notions of what, in such a case, was honourable; and as seeking repose by such means, was the most unlucky plan he could have adopted, as the sequel abundantly shows. An obedient regard to the directions of the Apostle Paul, (Eph. v. 21-25) would have soon settled all this strife, or, more properly speaking would have prevented it altogether.

In this matter MILTON appears like Samson when shorn of his Nazarite locks-become "weak, and as other men." MILTON's great strength, like that of Samson, lay in his knowledge of, and obedience to, the principles of revealed truth. While he adhered closely to these, he snapped with ease "the green withs," and the "new ropes;" and when even the "seven locks of his head were woven with a web, however closely fastened, "he went away with both the pin of the beam and the web." He despatched with almost infinite ease all the shophistry, and learning, and opprobrium employed by the bishops and others to bind and afflict him :

But on this subject of divorce, oh! how weak are his struggles, nerveless his arguments, how pettish his tem

* Samson Agonistes.

per, how peevish his language! The weakest of his opponents, in this controversy, were his match, more than his equal; and like Samson too, he does not appear to have been aware that "the Lord had departed from him!” That he who had treated the Fathers with such contempt should now have appealed to them; and even to an apocryphal writer for support! That so powerful a mind should have rested an argument in relation to positive law, upon the shifting ground of expediency! Oh! what merriment it must have afforded to his enemies to see this mental giant bound with fetters of brass, and grinding in the prison house of Gaza ! And how must he have been annoyed by the noise of the "owls, and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs!" Alas! that he should have been entirely ignorant of the ungodly temper which he was himself manifesting, and of the erroneous and inconsistent principles which he was pleading. Is it not suprising that he could not see his own face in the mirror of his own transparent lines upon this subject? namely, those

"That bawl for freedom in their senseless mood,

And still revolt when truth would make them free;
Licence they mean when they cry Liberty;

For who loves that, must first be wise and good."

COWPER, though a bachelor, understood this subject of "Domestic Duties," better than MILTON the married man. In his inimitable little piece, entitled "Mutual forbearance necessary to the Marriage state;" he has in fine satire exposed the triming ,,hich often lead to He -

"jar and tumult and intestine war.

his own best manner:

"Alas! and is domestic strife,
That sorest ill of human life

A plague so little to be feared,

As to be wantonly incurred,

To gratify a fretful passion,
On every trivial provocation?

The kindest and the happiest pair
Will find occasion to forbear;
And something, every day they live,
To pity, and perhaps forgive."

It appears most evident to me, that in regard to his treatment of his wife, MILTON was neither "wise nor good;" and that he unconsciously, while pleading with the parliament to grant him "domestic liberty," was seeking a "license" to absolve him from the just and equitable restraints of the laws of God and man. And oh! what a closing scene, when his obstinate wife, rather than see her place occupied by another, bathed in tears, falls at the feet of her still inexorable husband, supplicating his forgiveness! It was well for both parties that "his hair begun to grow again after he had been shaven; rather that his God had mercifully returned to him, and stirred up the generosity of his nature to forgive his humbled companion, who seems to have at least consented to receive forgiveness upon the condition of being "obliged to accept a kind of servitude at home below the dignity of a woman!” And this domestic lord received to his bosom a slave, instead of an equal! At all events, I rejoice that they were again reconciled, and that our English SAMSON had afterwards sufficient strength, as he evinced in his Defences of the People of England, by removing the two pillars of passive obedience and non-resistance, to pull down the temple of despotism upon the lords of the Philistines!

The first of the before-named elaborate works, on this most painful and humiliating subject, as has been mentioned, he dedicated "To the Parliament of England, with

the Assembly of Divines at Westminister." He thus commences his appeal: "If it were seriously askt, (and it would be no untimely question, renowned Parliament, select Assembly,) who, of all teachers and masters that ever have taught, hath drawn most disciples after him, both in religion and manners, it might not be untruly answered-Custom. Though Virtue be commended for the most persuasive in her theory, and Conscience, as the plain demonstration of the spirit, finds most evincing; yet, whether it be the secret of divine will, or the original blindness we are born in, so it happens, for the most part, that Custom still is silently received for the best instructor. You it concerns chiefly, worthies in Parliament, on whom, as on our deliverers, all our grievances and cares, by the merits of your eminence and fortitude are devolved; me it concerns next, having, with much labour and faithful diligence, first found out, or at least, with a fearless and communicative candour, first publisht, to the manifest good of Christendom, that which, calling to mind every thing mortal and immortal, I believe unfainedly to be true. Let not other men think their conscience bound to search continually after truth, to pray for enlightenings from above, to publish what they think they have so attained, and debar me from conceiving myself tied by the same duties."

Having asserted that the inviolability of marriage had no other law but custom, he then states, in few words, the arguments of his opponents, founded upon the practice of divorces having been permitted by Moses, though not sanctioned by the law of God. "This," he says, "is the common doctrine, that adulterous and injurious divorces were not connived only, but, with eye open, outlaw'd of old for hardness of heart. But that opinion, I trust, by this following argument hath been well read,