Category: History - British

Milton's England

To every well-read man whose mother tongue is English, whether he be born in America or Australia or within sound of Bow Bells, the little dot upon the map, marked "London," has an interest which surpasses that of any spot on earth. Though in his school-days he was taught noth...

Chapters

1. CHAPTER I.

To every well-read man whose mother tongue is English, whether he be born in America or Australia or within sound of Bow Bells, the little dot upon the map, marked "London," has...

14. CHAPTER XIV.

Scotland Yard, the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, discloses in its cramped and dingy quarters little if anything that remains of the time when Milton lived within its...

9. CHAPTER IX.

At the end of Great Tower Street is the church of All Hallows, Barking, anciently known as "Berkynge Church by the Tower." The edifice, which is situated close to Mark Lane Stat...

17. CHAPTER XVII.

In the summer of 1665, the Great Plague appeared in the midst of the alarm over the Dutch invasion. The three earlier visitations of the terrible disease during Milton's youth w...

10. CHAPTER X.

Passing by the tiny churchyard of St. Andrew Undershaft, by several narrow and obscure passages amid crowded business blocks, one comes upon the famous Crosby Hall on Bishopsgat...

3. CHAPTER III.

After his sister, who was then eighteen years old, had been wooed and won by Mr. Philips, and had made the first break in the home on Spread Eagle Court, Milton, now sixteen yea...

13. CHAPTER XIII.

Holborn was paved long before Milton's birth, and was a street of consequence, because of the Inns of Court, which opened north and south from it. From his time until 1868 a row...

12. CHAPTER XII.

When Milton was a lad at St. Paul's School, it is more than likely that he sometimes visited the boys of Charterhouse. Let us imagine him on some holiday taking a stroll outside...

11. CHAPTER XI.

Through Milton's lifetime and for nearly a century after, there stood on Gresham Street and Basinghall Street the famous Gresham College, founded in 1579, in honour of Sir Thoma...

8. CHAPTER VIII.

Except Westminster Abbey, no spot in England is so connected with every phase of England's history as is the Tower of London. A map, printed in the generation before Milton, sho...

5. CHAPTER V.

One year after his mother's death, and probably just after Christopher's wedding, the poet, now a man of thirty, arrived in Paris, accompanied by his servant, and bearing valuab...

16. CHAPTER XVI.

In Milton's day, London Bridge, over the narrowest part of the Thames, was the only bridge that spanned the silent highway between the Tower and Lambeth. The venerable pile of b...

2. CHAPTER II.

Directly under the shadow of St. Mary le Bow Church, and almost within bowshot of old St. Paul's, in a little court off Bread Street, three doors from Cheapside, John Milton, th...

7. CHAPTER VII.

If the pilgrim to the shrines of Puritans and poets has thought worth while to spend an afternoon at Horton, he may well spare two or three days more for a drive from there to S...

15. CHAPTER XV.

During the Civil War, the spot within Westminster which most interested every reformer was that where, for over five years, the famous Westminster Assembly gathered. During that...

6. CHAPTER VI.

Milton remained in Spring Gardens about seven months, when his new apartments in the north end of Whitehall Palace were ready. These opened from Scotland Yard, in which was the...

4. CHAPTER IV.

On leaving Cambridge, when he was nearly twenty-four years old, Milton retired to his father's new home at Horton, about seventeen miles west of London. Here he tells us that, "...