As father of his family, he clad

Their nakedness with skins of beasts.

The finale in Cadmon's "Fall of Man," although quite brief, possesses the same charm of chaste simplicity that characterises the whole of his poem:

Their sentence once pronounced

They bent their mournful steps from Paradise
To seek a narrower sphere.

Behind them closed

The glistening gates of their once joyous home,
Its comforts and delights forever lost!
And at the Lord's behest, one of His host
Of holy Angels, armed with fiery sword,
Kept constant guard to hinder their return.

Nor even then, would mighty God, at once
Despoil the guilty pair of all their joys,

E'en though His presence He had now withdrawn ;
But for their comfort, still he let shine forth
The vault of heaven adorned with radiant stars,
And of the treasures of the Earth, He gave
With open hand; and for their use He bade
The denizens of Earth and Sea increase
And multiply, and trees bring forth their fruit.
Sin-stained, they henceforth sojourned in a land
More sorrowful, a region and a home

More barren far of every earthly Good

Than were those blissful Seats from which, alas,
By Sin they were expelled.

This final scene in Milton's epic is more elaborate

than the above, and more strangely embroidered with ideas foreign to Oriental modes of thought. The mode is excellent, but it is the mode of the classic Hellenist, and not of the ancient Eastern bard.

The Archangel soon drew nigh,

Not in his shape celestial, but as man
Clad to meet man. Over his lucid arms
A military vest of purple flowed.

His starry helm unbuckled showed him prime
In manhood where youth ended; by his side,
As in a glistering zodiac, hung the sword,
Satan's dire dread, and in his hand the spear.
Adam bowed low; he, kingly, from his state
Inclined not, but his coming thus declared :—
Adam, Heaven's high behest no preface needs,

But longer in this Paradise to dwell

Permits not. To remove thee I am come,
And send thee from the Garden forth, to till
The ground whence thou wast taken, fitter soil."
He added not; for Adam, at the news
Heart-strook, with chilling gripe of sorrow stood,
That all his senses bound; Eve, who unseen
Yet all had heard, with audible lament
Discovered soon the place of her retire :-

"O unexpected stroke, worse than of Death!
Must I thus leave thee, Paradise? thus leave
Thee, native soil? these happy walks and shades,
Fit haunt of Gods, where I had hoped to spend,
Quiet, though sad, the respite of that day