greatly distinguished himself on the popular side. But as he was equally ready to flatter Charles II. or to praise Cromwell, he is now considered a meansouled man. His poems are graced with smoothness and polish, and he ranks high as an improver of English verse. His principal writings are Miscellaneous Poems, containing his Panegyric to the Lord Protector, and Amatory Verses.

RALPH CUDWORTH, 1617-1688, was a learned divine and philosopher, who wrote The True Intellectual System of the Universe, a blow at the atheism of his day. He was Hebrew professor at Cambridge, and his work is a vast storehouse of learn ing, and is unrivaled as a display of subtle and farreaching speculation.

JOHN BUNYAN, 1628-1688, was one of the most remarkable religious writers of any age. He was a tinker, and the son of a tinker, and yet he is known wherever our language is spoken, as the author of an allegory, the most simple, the most life-like, the most original and imaginative, the most captivating and affecting in the range of literature. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is popular now-was popular when first published with the aged and the young, the learned and the unlearned, the prince and the peasant. The author knew little of books, but he studied our grand English Bible, and was saturated with its spirit as well as words. He was indeed a

man of one book, but that, the Book of Books This gave him power, and as Lord Macaulay says, "Bunyan is as decidedly the first of allegorists, as Demosthenes is the first of orators, or Shakespeare the first of dramatists."

RICHARD BAXTER, 1615-1691, was a voluminous writer, and one of the most eminent non-conformist divines of the day. During the civil war he sympathized with Parliament, but being a zealous advocate of regular government in Church and State, he disapproved Cromwell's usurpation. His life was devoted to the promotion of piety and good morals, and his great merits were acknowledged by his distinguished friends, Dr. Isaac Barrow, Bishop Wilkins, and Sir Matthew Hale. He is reputed the author of near two hundred books, three of which were large folios, but none of them, excepting The Saint's Everlasting Rest, and A Call to the Unconverted, are much read. Like Bunyan, he used good, strong, homely English, and his works abound in choice and glowing imagery, and passages of hearty eloquence.

A glance over this chapter will render our progress manifest, and will prove that the period of the Commonwealth was not without its effect upon our iterature. We first saw, as we opened it, the figure of quaint Francis Quarles bearing to our gathering stores of literary riches his Emblems, Fob Militant,

and Feast of Worms, and not far behind was his younger friend Cowley, asking us to look at his Odes, and only exhibiting his unfinished Davideis to tell us that he had left the field of epic poetry for another to occupy. Then, away up in Scotland, among the picturesque scenery of Hawthornden, we saw burly old Ben Jonson walking by the river Eske, admiring nature somewhat, but praising in higher terms the verse of the friend by his side, William Drummond, the first of his people to write good English.

It was quite another picture when the witty Fuller appeared, cracking his jokes with his learned, fanciful, and somewhat younger companion Jeremy Taylor. Still younger was the eminent Hebrew professor Cudworth, who was piling up the vast stores of learning which have made his Intellectual System so formidable to ordinary readers, and so astonishing to the learned.

There were three others who always hold the attention of one who studies the days of the Puritan rule. Looking into Whitehall we saw John Milton acting as Latin secretary to the stern Roundhead who then occupied the home of the cavalier king. Had we followed him when he left that hall, we should have found the politician reassuming the poet's pen which he had dropped to become secretary.

Had we gone forty-five miles from Whitehall in 1660, we might have met in the common jail at Bedford, the most accomplished allegorist of all

years

history. There he was confined for the twelve that followed, and there he wrote his Pilgrim's Progress, for his jailer was kind-hearted, and allowed him pen, ink, and paper, and for reading, Foxe's Book of Martyrs and the Bible.

As we closed the chapter, we had before us the frail body of that voluminous writer who gave us The Saint's Everlasting Rest. Let us look into the famous Guildhall of London; we may see him again for a moment. It is the room in which the Lord Mayors have annually feasted their sovereigns for two hundred years. As we look down toward the great gothic window, we see the bloated drunkard who became so celebrated as Judge Jeffreys, sitting in the midst of a group of lawyers and jurymen. Before them, frail, feeble, and helpless, stands Baxter trying to make himself heard. But all his efforts are fruitless. The brutal judge roars "Richard, Richard! Dost thou think we will let thee poison this court? Thou hast written books enough to load a cart, and every book as full of sedition as an egg is full of meat!" We hear the jury meekly render a verdict of "guilty,”. we ask not of what,

- and, as the officers lead their unresisting prisoner to jail, we retire and breathe more freely as we become conscious that we are in the atmosphere of the nineteenth century!

Five

HE battle of Naseby was fought by the reorganized army of Parliament under Cromwell and Fairfax, and the royal forces led by Lord Astley, Prince Rupert, and King Charles I. himself. It decided the fate of the king. thousand Cavaliers were taken prisoners, and the result was that Charles delivered himself up to the Scots, who in turn delivered him to the English Parliament, and, as we have already seen, he was beheaded in 1649. The king's eldest son, Charles, left England after the battle of Naseby, in 1645, at the age of fifteen. Four years later, upon hearing of his father's execution, he assumed the title of king, with no prospect then of ascending the throne. Nor did the prospect brighten much until fifteen years more had passed over his head. During the interval the fortunes of the young prince had been quite varied. A portion of the time had been passed at the Louvre as guest of Louis XIV., who was eight years his junior, but who taught him lessons