chastity. So that even these books, which to many others have been the fuel of wantonness and loose living, I cannot think how, unless by divine indulgence, proved to me so many incitements, as you have heard, to the love and steadfast observation of that virtue which abhors the society of bordelloes.

27. Thus, from the laureat fraternity of poets, riper years and the ceaseless round of study and reading led me to the shady spaces of philosophy; but chiefly to the divine volumes of Plato, and his equal, Xenophon: where, if I should tell ye what I learnt of chastity and love, (23) I mean that which

(23) Milton, like every other great and noble mind, entertained the most elevated ideas of pure love. In the Paradise Lost, he thus, in a burst of enthusiasm, apostrophizes this holiest of all passions: :

"Hail, wedded love! mysterious law, true source

Of human offspring, sole propriety,

In paradise of all things common else.

The thoughts, and heart enlarges, hath his seat

In reason, and is judicious, is the scale

By which to heavenly love thou mayst ascend."-Book viii. v. 589, &c.

Elsewhere he beautifully denominates smiles, "the food of

love:"

"Yet not so strictly hath our Lord imposed
Labour, as to debar us when we need

Refreshment, whether food, or talk between,
Food of the mind, or this sweet intercourse

Of looks and smiles, for smiles from reason flow,

To brute denied, and are of love the food,

Love, not the lowest end of human life."--Book ix. v. 235, &c.

Plato, who, it will readily be imagined, was a favourite with

is truly so, whose charming cup is only virtue, which she bears in her hand to those who are worthy; (the rest are cheated with a thick intoxicating potion, which a certain sorceress, the abuser of love's name, carries about;) and how the first and chiefest office of love begins and ends in the soul, producing those happy twins of her divine generation, knowledge and virtue. With such abstracted sublimities as these, it might be worth your listening, readers, as I may one day hope to

66

Milton, as he never fails to be with all who possess or can appreciate genius, has, in the Phædrus and Symposion, delivered in a highly poetical and beautiful manner, his ideas on the nature of love; rising from the reprehension of that which is most vicious, to the loftiest and purest yearning of soul towards soul. "There is no one so base," says he, "as not to be inspired by love with a divine ardour for virtue, and rendered capable of contending in magnanimity with the noblest natures." To the question,-" What is love?" put by Socrates, Diotima, priestess of Venus, replies,—“ Aaíμwv péyas, w ZúкραTES;—“A mighty spirit, Socrates, which, like other dæmons, is half human, half divine; and its power is that of an interpreter and mediator between heaven and earth, conveying aloft the vows and prayers of mankind, and revealing to mortals the commands and responses of the gods. He stands in the midst between God and man, and fills and binds together the several parts of the universe. All religious institutions proceed from him. He is the originator of sacrifices, rites, hymns, prophesy. The divine and human natures meet only in him; he is the channel through which, waking or sleeping, men hold communication with heaven; and, while all others are esteemed mercenary and vulgar, he who exercises any of the ministries taught by love is regarded as the possessor of wisdom." But, to catch the spirit of Plato's doctrine, the whole dialogue must be read; (edit. Bekk. t. iv. p. 369-469.) and read, moreover, with the same feeling in which it was written. Among modern writers we know of none who have spoken of love more elo

have ye in a still time, when there shall be no · chiding; not in these noises, the adversary, as ye know, barking at the door, or searching for me at the bordelloes, where it may be has lost himself, and raps up without pity the sage and rheumatic old prelatess, with all her young Corinthian laity, to inquire for such a one.

28. Last of all, not in time, but as perfection is last, that care was ever had of me, with my earliest capacity, not to be negligently trained in the pre

quently or philosophically than Baxter and Jeremy Taylor. 66 Therefore," exclaims the former, "he that hath made love the great command, doth tell us that love is the great conception of his own essence, the spring of that command; and that this commanded imperfect love, doth tend to perfect heavenly love, even to our communion with essential infinite love. Every place that I have lived in was a place of divine love, which there set up its obliging monuments. Every year and hour of my life hath been a time of love. Every friend, and every neighbour, yea, every enemy, have been the messengers and instruments of love."-Dying Thoughts, p. 279, 280.-" Love," says Jeremy Taylor, "is infinitely removed from all possibility of rudeness; it is a thing pure as light, sacred as a temple, lasting as the world. The love that can cease was never true;' it is ouλía, so Moses called it; it is εvvota, so St. Paul; it is φιλότης, so Homer; it is φιλοφροσύνη, so Plutarch: that is, it contains in it all sweetness and all society, and felicity, and all prudence, and all wisdom. For there is nothing can please a man without love; and if a man be weary of the wise discourses of the apostles, and of the innocency of an even and private fortune, or hates peace or a fruitful year, he hath reaped thorns and thistles from the choicest flowers of paradise; for nothing can sweeten felicity itself but love:' but when a mian dwells in love, then the breasts of his wife are pleasant as the droppings on the hill of Hermon, her eyes are fair as the light of heaven, she is a fountain sealed, and he can quench his thirst, and ease his cares, and lay his sorrows down on her lap, and can

cepts of the Christian religion: (24) this that I have hitherto related, hath been to show, that though Christianity had been but slightly taught me, yet a certain reservedness of natural disposition, and moral discipline, learnt out of the noblest philosophy, was enough to keep me in disdain of far less incontinences than this of the bordello. But having had the doctrine of Holy Scripture, unfolding those chaste and high mysteries, with timeliest care infused, that "the body is for the Lord, and

retire home to his sanctuary and refectory, and his gardens of sweetness and chaste refreshments. No man can tell but he that loves his children, how many delicious accents make a man's heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges; their childishness, their stammering, their little angers, their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities, are so many little emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and society: but he that loves not his wife and children, feeds a lioness at home, and broods a nest of sorrows; and blessing itself cannot make him happy. So that all the commandments of God enjoining a man to love his wife, are nothing but so many necessities and capacities of joy. She that is loved is safe; and he that loves is joyful.' Love is a union of all things excellent; it contains in it proportion and satisfaction; and rest and confidence; and I wish that this were so much proceeded in, that the heathens themselves could not go beyond us in this virtue, and its proper and appendant happiness."The Marriage Ring: Sacred Classics, vol. vii. p. 179–181. Select Sermons.

(24) All Milton's biographers speak of the religious education he received. "It was at this early period of his life, as we may confidently conjecture, that he imbibed that spirit of devotion which actuated his bosom to his latest moment upon earth: and we need not extend our search beyond the limits of his own house for the fountain from which the living influence was derived."-Symmons' Life of Milton, 2nd edit. p. 53.

the Lord for the body;" thus also I argued to myself, that if unchastity in a woman, whom St. Paul terms the glory of man, be such a scandal and dishonour, then certainly in a man, who is both the image and glory of God, it must, though commonly not so thought, be much more deflowering and dishonourable; in that he sins both against his own body, which is the perfecter sex, and his own glory, which is in the woman; and, that which is worst, against the image and glory of God, which is in himself. Nor did I slumber over that place, expressing such high rewards of ever accompanying the Lamb, with those celestial songs to others inapprehensible, but not to those who were not defiled with women, which doubtless means fornication; for marriage must not be called a defilement.

29. Thus large I have purposely been, that if I have been justly taxed with this crime, it may come upon me, after all this my confession, with a tenfold shame: but if I have hitherto deserved no such opprobrious word, or suspicion, I may hereby engage myself now openly to the faithful observation of what I have professed. I go on to show you the unbridled impudence of this loose railer, who, having once begun his race, regards not how far he flies out beyond all truth and shame; who from the single notice of the Animadversions, as he protests, will undertake to tell ye the very clothes I wear, though he be much mistaken in my wardrobe and like a son of Belial, without the hire of Jezebel, charges me "of blaspheming God and the king," as ordinarily as he imagines "me