In the which a Mystery lies.

RIDDLE.
"Some men are free whilst they in prison lie;
Others who ne'er saw prison captives die.

CAUTION.
"He that can receive it may,
He that cannot, let him stay,
Not be hasty, but suspend
Judgment till he sees the end.

SOLUTION.
"He's only free, indeed, who's free from sin,
And he is fastest bound that's bound therein."


In the mean time, where is our "Master Milton"? We, left him deprived of
his young companion and reader, sitting lonely in his small dining-room,
in Jewen Street. It is now the year 1665; is not the pestilence in
London? A sinful and godless city, with its bloated bishops fawning
around the Nell Gwyns of a licentious and profane Defender of the Faith;
its swaggering and drunken cavaliers; its ribald jesters; its obscene
ballad-singers; its loathsome prisons, crowded with Godfearing men and
women: is not the measure of its iniquity already filled up? Three years
only have passed since the terrible prayer of Vane went upward from the
scaffold on Tower Hill: "When my blood is shed upon the block, let it, O
God, have a voice afterward!" Audible to thy ear, O bosom friend of the
martyr! has that blood cried from earth; and now, how fearfully is it
answered! Like the ashes which the Seer of the Hebrews cast towards