Page:Papers on Literature and Art (Fuller).djvu/55

Rh duty, would become the principal exponent. But the Father is still far beyond the understanding of his child.

His ideas of marriage, as expressed in the treatises on Divorce, are high and pure. He aims at a marriage of souls. If he incline too much to the prerogative of his own sex, it was from that mannishness, almost the same with boorishness, that is evident in men of the greatest and richest natures, who have never known the refining influence of happy, mutual love, as the best women evince narrowness and poverty under the same privation. In every line we see how much Milton required the benefit of “the thousand decencies that daily flow” from such a relation, and how greatly he would have been the gainer by it, both as man and as genius. In his mind lay originally the fairest ideal of woman; to see it realized would have “finished his education.” His commonwealth could only have grown from the perfecting of individual men. The private means to such an end he rather hints than states in the short essay to Education. They are such as we are gradually learning to prize. Healthful diet, varied bodily exercises, to which we no longer need give the martial aim he proposed, fit the mind for studies which are by him arranged in a large, plastic and natural method.

Among the prophetic features of his system we may mention the place given to Agriculture and Music:

“The next step would be to the authors on agriculture—Cato, Varro and Columella—for the matter is most easy; and if the language be difficult so much the better; it is not a difficulty above their years. And here will be an occasion of inciting, and enabling them hereafter to improve the tillage of their country, to recover their bad soil, and to remedy the waste that is made of good; for this was one of Hercules’ praises.”

How wise, too, his directions as to interspersing the study with travel and personal observation of important objects. We must have methods of our own, but the hints we might borrow from this short essay of Milton’s are endless.