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modern days in the series of poems, in which our Poet Laureate 
has illustrated his career. It was to this period of our early 
history that Milton turned, when he was meditating the intended 
work, which he hoped posterity would not let die. The circum- 
stances of Milton’s days, however—the rude revolution which 
burst over the country in the middle of the seventeenth century, 
in the end gave another issue to his thoughts, and— 
The British theme, the old 
Romantic tale, by Milton left unsung, 
was left to others to adorn. And so much, at one time or 
another, by myth, and poem, and tradition, has it been adorned, 
that Arthur’s very existence has at times been doubted. We need 
not do this. He was, there seems every reason to believe, a great 
leader of the native Britons in this district of Strathclyde in the 
sixth century ; he became to them the champion of their race, the 
assertor of their liberties, and has lived on in the grateful memories 
of his countrymen, as a type of the highest ideal of excellence to 
which personal prowess and worth—in spite of some great faults 
and some great errors—can attain. ‘The old world,” says one of 
the chroniclers, ‘knows not his peer, nor will the future show us 
his equal: he alone towers above all other kings—better than the 
past ones, and greater than those that are to be. “Rex guondam rexque 
Juturus—the king that was and yet shall be again—according to the 
legendary inscription on his tomb—he was treasured up in the 
recollections of a long posterity, with all the love and fondness 
which people feel for the leaders, who in critical moments have 
placed themselves at their head. Well, though history—for he 
lived before the days of historical records—does not fix for us in 
definite terms the date and the scenes of his great adventures, yet 
nowhere, as has recently been shown by Mr. Stuart Glennie, in his 
Arthurian Localities, so much as in this Border district, has he left 
his mark indelibly in the names of the lecalities, with which he 
must have been connected. In this respect it is truly Arthur-land 
—the land through which he swept with his famous battles, 
bringing peace and deliverance to the people whom he led—peace 
