I measure your gratitude, if anything
of the kind is due to me from you, by your constancy in
letter-writing. My feeling of your gratitude to me will be
strongest when the fruits of those services of mine to you of which
you speak shall appear not so much in frequent letters as in your
perseverance and laudable proficiency in excellent pursuits. You
have rightly marked out for yourself the path of virtue in that
theatre of the world on which you have entered; but remember that
the path is common so far to virtue and vice, and that you have yet
to advance to where the path divides itself into two. And you ought
now betimes to prepare yourself for leaving this common path,
pleasant and flowery, and for being able the more readily, with
your own will, though with labour and danger, to climb that arduous
and difficult one which is the slope of virtue only. For this you
have great advantages over others, believe me, in having secured so
faithful and skilful a guide. Farewell.

"Westminster: December 20, 1659."

Two days after the date of these letters the uproar of execration
round the Wallingford-House Government had reached such an extreme
that Whitlocke made his desperate proposal to Fleetwood that they
should extricate themselves from their difficulty by declaring for
Charles and opening negotiations with him. Two days more, and
Fleetwood's soldiery, under the command of officers of the Rump, were
marching down Chancery Lane, cheering Speaker Lenthall and asking his
forgiveness. Again two days more, and on the 26th of December,
Fleetwood having given up the game and sent the keys of the
Parliament House to Lenthall, the Rumpers were back in their old
places. We have arrived, therefore, at that _Third Stage of the
Anarchy_ which may be called "The Second Restoration of the
Rump."

* * * * *

Of Milton in this stage of the Anarchy we hear little or nothing
directly; but there are means for tracing the course of his
thoughts.

As may be inferred from the melancholy tone of his letter to
Oldenburg, he had all but ceased to hope for any deliverance for the
Commonwealth by any of the existing parties. Even the Second
Restoration of the Rump, though it was what he was bound to approve,
and had indeed suggested as possibly the best course, can have
brought him but little increase of expectation. If, in its best
estate, after its first restoration, the Rump h