When his "doctrine and discipline" shall have been sanctioned by lawgivers, we may be sure that the world is already much better, or much worse.
As the girl-wife vanishes from Milton's household her place is taken by the venerable figure of his father.

The aged man had removed with his son Christopher to Reading, probably before August, 1641, when the birth of a child of his name--Christopher's offspring as it should seem--appears in the Reading register.

Christopher was to exemplify the law of reversion to a primitive type.

Though not yet a Roman Catholic like his grandfather, he had retrograded into Royalism, without becoming on that account estranged from his elder brother.

The surrender of Reading to the Parliamentary forces in April, 1643, involved his "dissettlement," and the migration of his father to the house of John, with whom he was moreover better in accord in religion and politics.
Little external change resulted, "the old gentleman," says Phillips, "being wholly retired to his rest and devotion, with the least trouble imaginable." About the same time the household received other additions in the shape of pupils, admitted, Phillips is careful to assure us, by way of favour, as M.Jourdain selected stuffs for his friends.