Free thought had perished along with free institutions in the preceding
century, and as a consequence, though the physical sciences still
numbered successful cultivators, originality of mind was all but
extinct. Things, nevertheless, wore a gayer aspect than of late. The
very completeness of the triumph of secular and spiritual despotism had
made them less suspicious, surly, and austere. Spanish power was visibly
decaying. The long line of _zelanti_ Popes had come to an end; and it
was thought that if the bosom of the actual incumbent could be
scrutinized, no little complacency in Swedish victories over the Faith's
defenders would be found. An atmosphere of toleration was diffusing
itself, bigotry was imperceptibly getting old-fashioned, the most
illustrious victim of the Inquisition was to be well-nigh the last. If
the noble and the serious could not be permitted, there was no ban upon
the amiable and the frivolous: never had the land been so full of petty
rhymesters, antiquarian triflers, and gregarious literati, banded to
play at authorship in academies, like the seven Swabians leagued to kill
the hare. For the rest, the Italy of Milton's day, its superstition and
its scepticism, and the sophistry that strove to make the two as one;
its monks and its bravoes; its processions and its pantomimes; its cult
of the Passion and its cult of Paganism; the opulence of its past and
the impotence of its present; will be found depicted by sympathetic
genius in the second volume of "John Inglesant."

Milton arrived in Paris about the end of April or beginning of May. Of
his short stay there it is only known that he was received with
distinction by the English Ambassador, Lord Scudamore, and owed to him
an introduction to one of the greatest men in Europe, Hugo Grotius, then
residing at Paris as envoy from Christina of Sweden. Travelling by way
of Nice, Genoa, Leghorn, and Pisa, he arrived about the beginning of
August at Florence; where, probably by the aid of good recommendations,