t between Oromasdes and Arimanes, liberty and despotism,
reason and prejudice. That great battle was fought for no single
generation, for no single land. The destinies of the human race were
staked on the same cast with the freedom of the English people. Then
were first proclaimed those mighty principles which have since worked
their way into the depths of the American forests, which have roused
Greece from the slavery and degradation of two thousand years, and
which, from one end of Europe to the other, have kindled an
unquenchable fire in the hearts of the oppressed, and loosed the knees
of the oppressors with an unwonted fear.

Of those principles, then struggling for their infant existence, Milton
was the most devoted and eloquent literary champion. We need not say how
much we admire his public conduct. But we cannot disguise from ourselves
that a large portion of his countrymen still think it unjustifiable. The
civil war, indeed, has been more discussed, and is less understood, than
any event in English history. The friends of liberty labored under the
disadvantage of which the lion in the fable complained so bitterly.
Though they were the conquerors, their enemies were the painters. As a
body, the Roundheads had done their utmost to decry and ruin
literature; and literature was even with them, as, in the long run, it
always is with its enemies. The best book on their side of the question
is the charming narrative of Mrs. Hutchinson. May's History of the
Parliament is good; but it breaks off at the most interesting crisis of
the struggle. The performance of Ludlow is foolish and violent; and most
of the later writers who have espoused the same cause--Oldmixon, for
instance, and Catherine Macaulay--have, to say the least, been more
distinguished by zeal than either by candor or by skill. On the other
side are the most authoritative and the most popular historical works in
our language, that of Clarendon, and that of Hume. The former is not
only ably written and full of valuable information, but has also an air
of dignity and sincerity which makes even the prejudices and errors with
which it abounds respectable. Hume, from whose fascinating narrative the
great mass of the reading public are still contented to take their
opinions, hated religion so much that he hated liberty for having been
allied with religion, and has pleaded the cause of tyranny with the
dexterity of an advocate while affecting the impartiality of a