With jubilee, and loud hosannas fill'd

The eternal regions: lowly reverent

Towards either throne they bow, and to the ground,

With solemn adoration down they cast

Their crowns, inwove with amarant and gold:
Immortal amarant, a flower which once

In Paradise, fast by the tree of life,

Began to bloom; but soon, for man's offence,

To heaven removed, where first it grew, there grows,
And flowers aloft, shading the fount of life,

And where the river of bliss, through 'midst of heaven,
Rolls o'er Elysian flowers her amber stream:

With these, that never fade, the spirits elect

Bind their resplendent locks, inwreathed with beams:
Now in loose garlands thick thrown off, the bright
Pavement, that like a sea of jasper shone,
Impurpled with celestial roses, smiled.

Then, crown'd again, their golden harps they took,
Harps ever tuned, that glittering by their side
Like quivers hung, and with preamble sweet
Of charming symphony they introduce
Their sacred song, and waken raptures high;
No voice exempt, no voice but well could join
Melodious part, such concord is in heaven.

• Thee, Father,' first they sung, 'Omnipotent,
Immutable, Immortal, Infinite,

Eternal King,'" &c.

The reader may turn, for himself, to the song. In describing the persons and deeds of angels, Milton has excelled Dante, Tasso, Marini, and other Italian poets, though to each of these he has been indebted for some traits of beauty or grandeur. Uriel, Raphael, Gabriel, Ithuriel, Zephon, Abdiel, and Michael, are each as individual as though they were beings of flesh and blood. With yet, stronger features and bolder strokes of the pen, or, rather, of the pencil, has he portrayed "the apostate host." Satan, Moloch, Beelzebub, Chemos, Thammuz, Ashtaroth, Belial, Mammon, and others,-fiends in hell, who were worshipped as gods in Palestine, are each

represented to the life, and each distinct in wickedness. Satan alone is complete in all the elements of evil.

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One of the wonderful faculties of Milton's mind was the power of finding fit employments for the actors and sufferers in his song, the scenes of which are laid either 'beyond this visible diurnal sphere," among spiritual beings, without bodily parts and passions, or with the first human pair in their state of innocence. The various modes in which the fallen angels, during Satan's absence, try to find-" truce to (their) restless thoughts, and entertain the irksome hours, till (their) great chief return," display singular invention. The following are brief examples:

"Others, with vast Typhœan rage, more fell,

Rend up both rocks and hills, and ride the air
In whirlwind; hell scarce holds the wild uproar:
As when Alcides, from Echalia, crown'd

With conquest, felt the envenom'd robe, and tore,
Through pain, up by the roots, Thessalian pines,
And Lichas, from the top of Eta, threw

Into the Euboic sea.

Others, more mild,

Retreated in a silent valley, sing

With notes angelical, to many a harp,
Their own heroic deeds, and hapless fall
By doom of battle; and complain that fate
Free virtue should inthral to force or chance.
Their song was partial; but the harmony
(What could it less when spirits immortal sing?)
Suspended hell, and took with ravishment

The thronging audience.

In discourse more sweet

(For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense,)
Others apart sat on a hill retired,

In thoughts more elevate and reason'd high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fix'd fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost."

The latter groups are exquisitely conceived, and adapted to mitigate the "regions of horror, doleful shades, where hope comes never," hideously yet sublimely set forth in the first quotation, and in the sequel.

The first two books are thick-scattered with grand and affecting similes borrowed from the external world, which have the happy effect of turning the reader's eye, at intervals, from the spectral abominations of hell, and relieving his imagination from horrors heaped upon horrors, during his sojourn with the poet in that obscure and bottomless abyss, objects which will not bear to be long looked upon in their unmitigated blackness of darkness, or contemplated by the ghastly illumination of that "dungeon," which on all sides flamed," yet from whose flames "no light, but rather darkness visible-served only to discover sights of woe." Let the curious reader of these two books collect together, and peruse consecutively, all the embellishments of this kind which adorn and illustrate the various topics, and he will be surprised to mark the array of sublime and impressive imagery thus presented.

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Of Satan himself it may be affirmed, that Milton's conception of his personal presence, his transcendent intellect, and his moral degradation,—“ archangel in eclipse, and the excess of glory obscured,"-" a murderer from the beginning, who abode not in the truth,"-" a liar and the father of lies," that conception alone as far exceeds every other personification of the Evil One, existent in poetry, tradition, or romance, as "Lucifer, the son of the morning," "falling like lightning from heaven," transcends the flickering meteors of the marsh, or the torches that flare and go out in the mephitic atmosphere of a charnel house. On the development of this character throughout the progress of the poem, there is no room to dwell here; one feature only, which has scarcely been noticed, if at all, by former critics, deserves to be pointed out, as the very sign by which he may be infallibly detected when touched by the spear of

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an Ithuriel, while it is the very means, in the successful exercise of which he won his usurped dominion on earth, and maintains by it his power to deceive the nations and rule in the hearts of the children of disobedience. The poet, who well knew his devices, has represented him, in every voluntary act of his policy, taking a false shape, that he might in none be suspected for what he is. From his landing on this orb till he takes flight from it, after the accomplishment of his infernal errand, he does nothing in his own form, or as himself, the foe of God and man. Thus, in Book III., he transforms himself into an angel of light, to impose upon Uriel, the guardian of the sun,— one of the seven spirits that stand in sight of God's high throne,"—that from him he may learn the way to that new world of which he was in search. Him he effectually deludes by his fair show and fairer words. Alighting on "the mount, north of Eden," from thence he addresses that marvellous speech to the sun, which discloses all the secrets of "the hell within him." During the delivery (by a master-stroke of the poet) he is represented as unconsciously relapsing into himself, under the agony of remorse, despair, and impotent malignity. This betrays him, as "alien from heaven," and "one of the banished crew," to Uriel, whose eye had pursued him, and watched his fiendish gesticulations there. Forthwith "gliding through the even -on a sunbeam—swift as a shooting star in autumn thwarts the night," the seraph speeds to inform Gabriel and the angelic guard of Paradise of the ominous intrusion. The sequel shows the arch-traitor under another and a base disguise," squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, assaying, by his devilish art, to reach the organs of her fancy, and with them forge illusions, as he list, phantasms and dreams." Being caught in this exercise by two of the watch, whom Gabriel had sent in search of him :—“ Him, thus intent, Ithuriel with his spear touch'd lightly; for no falsehood can endure touch of celestial temper, but returns

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of force to its own likeness: up he starts, discover'd and surprised." The interview that follows between "those two fair angels and the grisly king," and afterwards with Gabriel, to whom they bring him, reluctantly, "o'ercome with rage," and, "like a proud steed rein'd, champing his iron curb," is the most spirited and dramatic scene in the poem. It ends, indeed, unsatisfactorily, but could not otherwise have been ended, without marring the catastrophe of the whole.

On his first entrance into Paradise, he assumes the appearance of "a cormorant, perched upon the tree of life," from which he discovers Adam and Eve. Thence he descends among the animals that companied together, and with the human pair who dwelt in the happy garden.

"Nearer to view his prey, and unespied,

To mark what of their state he more might learn,
By word or action mark’d: about them round
A lion now he stalks with fiery glare;

Then as a tiger, who by chance hath spied
In some purlieu two gentle fawns at play,
Straight couches close, then, rising, changes oft
His couchant watch, as one who chose his ground
Whence rushing he might surest seize them both,
Griped in each paw."

The aptness of the simile of the tiger, in respect to the two fawns, and Satan meditating the destruction of “Adam, the first of men," and "the first of women, Eve," who are immediately afterwards introduced in conversation, must strike every reader of discernment.

The grand disguise, under which, as a serpent, the Devil beguiles Eve by his subtlety, need not be dwelt upon; the passage is familiar to those with whom Milton is worthily known; the description of his form, his beauty, and his antics, is above all praise. On his return from earth through chaos, he is again seen by his son and daughter, Sin and Death, in his most imposing disguise, as "an angel