Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/683

Rh people earnestly to desire the restoration of the Monarchy. Prince Charles, towards whom the tide of returning royalty was running, was now in Holland. A race was actually run between Monk, the leader of the army, and Parliament, to see which should first present him with the invitation to return to his people, and take his place upon the throne of his ancestors. Amid the wildest demonstrations of joy, Charles stepped ashore on the island from which he had been for nine years an exile. As he observed the preparations made for his reception, and received from all parties the warmest congratulations, he remarked with pleasant satire, "It is my own fault that I did not come back sooner, for I find nobody who does not tell me he has always longed for my return."

Puritan Literature.

It lights up the Religious Side of the English Revolution.— No epoch in history receives a fresher illustration from the study of its literature than that of the Puritan Commonwealth. To neglect this, and yet hope to gain a true conception of that wonderful episode in the life of the English people by an examination of its outer events and incidents alone, would, as Green declares, be like trying to form an idea of the life and work of ancient Israel from the Kings and the Chronicles, without the Psalms and the Prophets. The true character of the English Revolution, especially upon its religious side, must be sought in the magnificent Epic of Milton and the unequalled Allegory of Bunyan.

Both of these great works, it is true, were written after the Restoration, but they were both inspired by the same spirit that had struck down Despotism and set up the Commonwealth. The Epic was the work of a lonely, disappointed Republican; the Allegory, of a captive Puritan.

Milton (1608–1674) stands as the grandest representative of Puritanism. He was the greatest statesman of the Revolution, the stoutest champion of English liberties against the tyranny of the House of Stuart. After the beheading of Charles I. he wrote a famous work in latin, entitled The Defence of the English People, in which he justified the execution of the king.