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ous. The translations are mainly of interest now, as showing the early proclivities of his mind towards sacred things, and as marking the dawn on the horizon of letters of that magnificent genius which was eventually to sheet the whole literary heavens with unwonted splendor.

Milton remained at St. Paul's school during two years. Upon completing his seventeenth year, he was removed to Cambridge, where he was admitted a pensioner in Christ college on the 12th of February, 1624-5,* being already distinguished as a classical scholar, and conversant with most of the modern tongues.

* The reason for this double date is, that prior to 1752 the year in England began, not on the 1st of January, but on the 25th of March. All those days therefore which intervened between the 31st of December and the 25th of March, which we should now date as belonging to a particular year, were then dated as belonging to the year preceding that. As we now date, Milton entered college in February, 1625, but in the old reckoning it was February, 1624.

CHAPTER II.

BEFORE accompanying Milton to Cambridge, we desire to turn aside and devote a chapter to the scenes, influences, and society of his boyhood. It has been well said that a great part of the education of every child consists of those impressions, visual and other, which its senses are busily though unconsciously drinking in from the scenes amid which it daily lives. Familiarity therefore with the early associations of famous men, not unfrequently affords a key to their whole char

acter.

The London of 1608 was not that mammoth Babel, the London of our time. In place of its present two millions and a half of inhabitants, the city contained, in the days when Milton's boyish feet trod its pavements, something under two hundred thousand souls. The great fire of 1666 licked up with its flaming tongues most of the antiquities of London. Bread-street, Cheapside, the old taverns, round

whose quaint gables clustered the rich traditions of the past, the famous tenements of the rich burghers-all succumbed. The burned district was, however, rebuilt with as strict attention to the old sites as the surveyor's art of that day could insure; so that these portions of the city occupy the same relative position on the map of London as before the fire. We may therefore, with a little faith and a little fancy, repeople the old streets until the past shall once more live and breathe.

Cheapside was then, as now, a famous thoroughfare, gay with shops, and bustling with traffic. Milton had only to go a few paces from his father's door to see the whole of that great street almost at a glance. Here the din

of trade was at its loudest. The shops of the mercers and goldsmiths lined the sidewalks. Some of the most noted hostelries of the city there welcomed travellers. Multitudinous footpassengers thronged the pavements, while horsemen, chairs, and an occasional coachfor of late years these vehicles had come into fashion, and the complaint was made that "the world was running on wheels with many

whose parents had been glad to go on foot"passed and repassed. Whenever there was any city pageant, it was sure to pass through Cheapside. The whole aspect of the street, with its houses of various heights, nearly all turned gablewise to the street, all with projecting upper-stories of wood-work, and dotted with latticed windows, was strangely picturesque. Some of the buildings were, according to the ideas of that age, as imposing as any in Christendom. Eastward was a row of many "fair and large houses possessed of mercers;" and westward, beginning at the very corner of Bread-street, was another row, the most beautiful frame of fair houses and shops," says Stow, a careful antiquarian, "that be within the walls of London, or elsewhere in England."

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Bread-street stretched southward from Cheapside, and was "so called," says Stow, "of bread anciently sold there." It was in Milton's youth one of the most respectable streets in the city, "wholly inhabited by rich merchants," who had their shops below and their dwellings above. It could boast of two

parish churches, and of "divers fair inns for good receipt of carriers and other travellers." "The Spread-eagle," the shop and dwelling of the scrivener Milton, was, as we have seen, situated in this street. It was a commodious and sightly building, fully in accordance with its owner's prosperous circumstances, and was not at all put to the blush by its neighbors. Near this house was the parish church of Allhallows, where Milton sat every Sunday with his father and mother, and in which he had been christened.

Also in the immediate neighborhood was the famous "Mermaid tavern," the resort of Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, and other great spirits of the time, of which Beaumont thus speaks in a sonnet to Ben Jonson:

"What things have we seen

Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been

So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,

As if they every one from whence they came

Had meant to put his whole soul in a jest,

And had resolved to live a fool the rest

Of his dull life; then, when there hath been thrown

Wit able enough to justify the town

For three days past-wit that might warrant be

For the whole city to talk foolishly

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