Roman imperialism Author:John Robert Seeley Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IV. MILTON'S POLITICAL OPINIONS. SUCH times as the Commonwealth, and such political writers as Milton, are separated from us by a gulf. They do not immedia... more »tely concern the England of the present. Politicians have little occasion to study them ; they are seldom referred to in the House of Commons. Political precedents taken from the reign of Charles I. are not now held to be applicable ; the opinions of the writers of that time are not now authoritative. It is understood that we stand upon a basis which was laid later, that a radically different conception of the state and of government separates us from the politics of that age. Through this very fact, therefore, that age becomes more interesting than it was for the historical student. Now, that it is dead, it becomes ready for the dissecting knife. Because it no longer excites our passions, or appeals to our party prejudices, because in fact our sympathies have cooled towards it, for that very reason it appeals to our reason more strongly, and excites a keener philosophical curiosity. This is the feeling which pervades all the recent literature of this subject, beginning with Carlyle's " Cromwell." That book may be regarded as the transfiguration or apotheosis of the whole subject. Itwas the removal of it from the warm but cloudy atmosphere of party passions and quarrels into a cold but clear sky of philosophical inquiry. Not that the writer himself can be called cold or impartially philosophical ; far from it. But with respect to the old party divisions he is impartial. To the old Cavalier and Roundhead, Tory and Whig, controversy, which resounds like an interminable parliamentary debate through previous histories ending with Macaulay, he is absolutely indifferent. He is obliged to translate it into quite a new dialect ...« less