great learning and ability on the same subject; so that public interest in the eighteenth century is now thoroughly awakened, and we begin to see, with more clearness than before, what were its leading characteristics, and to appreciate the wheat among the tares, of which last, no doubt, it yielded an abundant crop.

In looking back upon the eighteenth century, one of the first things which strike us is the air of repose which breathes over it. It reminds one of the land of the lotus-eaters, "in which it seemed always afternoon." And this, too, in spite of an occasional rebellion or a serious riot which would startle us out of our propriety at the present day. But the eighteenth century took things very easily. George II. was rather frightened in 1745; a few Londoners left the city, and a few people in the country, Lord Eldon's mother among the number, got out of the direct line of the armies. But, on the whole, the irruption of the Highlanders seems to have been regarded with great indifference. And it is wonderful how shortly all record of it was forgotten. There are probably fewer local traditions of Prince Charles's advance into England than of any event in history of equal magnitude and interest. The fact is, nobody cared. And when the Highlanders retreated the wave closed over them, and left hardly a trace behind. The British public, again reminding us of the lotus-eaters, were in no mind to be startled out of their pleasant doze. They had had enough of action and of motion; they had gone through two revolutions, a religious and a civil

one.

There had been burning, and fighting, and exile, and confiscation, on and off, for two centuries. They had grown weary of these troubles, and of the principles by which they had been caused. They would fight no more for an idea; of that they were quite certain. And though, when a Spaniard or a Frenchman became troublesome, John Bull flared up for a moment and chastised them, he soon sank back again into his accustomed indolence, basking in the sunshine of domestic peace and prosperity, and venerating the institutions of the country as they enabled him to do so. It is the life of Old Leisure," that inimitable portrait drawn by one of the greatest literary artists which the fair sex has produced in this country, which greets us everywhere in that happy time, before the French Revolution had made all the world eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and had brought death and democracy into the societies of Europe. In spite of the one great question which must still have kept the minds of politicians unsettled during the first half of the eighteenth century, the repose of which we speak extended itself to the world of politics. Till we look more closely into the matter, we are puzzled to know what the

Houses of Parliament could have found to talk about during the reign of the first two Georges. What, however, really gave life and meaning to the Parliamentary opposition of those days was that old antagonism between land and trade which was the growth of the Revolution, and of which the ridiculous side is shown us in Addison's "Freeholder," and the more reasonable one in Shelburne's "Autobiography." The complaint was, that by leaning exclusively on the trading class the Government had created an artificial interest, through which they were enabled to override the natural interests of the country, and to defy the majority of the nation. Enough of feudalism still survived to make it generally believed that the landowners under the sovereign were the natural leaders of the people. And it is the fierce struggle for existence of this ancient principle, with the new political ideas then beginning to assert themselves, which is the key to much of the Parliamentary history of the period. The country gentlemen, then the really independent party, had a second grievance also. They held that the new Parliamentary system was not constitutional.

Lord Shelburne, who, for the

age in which he lived, was what we should now call an advanced Liberal, constantly speaks of this system as a sham. The monarchy was only a convenient cloak for the real supremacy of a faction, and the dictatorship of a single minister. This, the country gentlemen contended, was not what they meant when they accepted the new dynasty. Non hæc in fœdera veni, said the Tory party. They were all stanchly monarchical, and they were now palmed off with a counterfeit. It would be foreign to the purpose of the present article to discuss the reasonableness or unreasonableness of these complaints. We are trying only to realize as closely as possible the Parliamentary life of the period, and what it was that gave reality and meaning to that Tory opposition, so much talked of and so little understood, which was led by Wyndham and inspired by Bolingbroke. We know better since the publication of Lord Shelburne's life what Sir William talked about to the Somersetshire squires when he assembled them round his table at Orchard Wyndham, or drank a glass of punch with them at the neighboring bowling-green. "During the first twenty years of the reign of George II. there were three parties: first, the old Whigs, who entirely composed the administration; secondly, the discontented Whigs, who, one after another, quarreled with Sir Robert Walpole and the main body; thirdly, the Tories, to whose character and principles sufficient justice has not been done, owing to the never-ceasing outcry of ministers in confounding them with the Jacobites; but, in fact, they were the landed interest of

England, who desired to see an honorable, dignified government, conducted with order and due economy and due subordination, in opposition to the Whigs, who courted the mob in the first instance, and in the next the commercial interest." These, then, were the real principles of opposition. The Whigs had exalted the trading interest at the expense of the land, and, by setting up a sham monarchy instead of a real one, had violated the spirit of the constitution. But, on the whole, it was an age of repose. Ministers had to undergo an annual baiting on the Germanizing policy of the court and on the increase of the national debt, the bugbear which afflicted our ancestors with a perpetual panic. But the outside political world was stirred hardly by a single ripple. Of legal or constitutional changes no serious sound was ever heard. When Walpole was asked by the Dissenters when the time would arrive for removing their disabilities, he answered, "Never!" Now and then there was a murmur of triennial Parliaments, and a whisper of Parliamentary reform. But the aversion of the people to any further changes was too deeply rooted to permit of either question being seriously entertained, and established institutions slumbered on in absolute security. In spite of the parvenu trade, the peerage and the gentry were still the real governing powers in the country, and their supremacy was cheerfully accepted as one of the eternal laws of nature. Mr. Lecky, in a very fine passage, sums up the advantages and disadvantages of aristocratic government, deciding in its favor by several lengths, if I may use such an expression. By the aristocracy, however, he seems to mean principally the nobility; and he is clearly of opinion that the oligarchical arrangements of the eighteenth century, against which the country party protested so long and so loudly, were a decided benefit to the nation. He thinks that, as far as they still exist, they are so still. But this is a political speculation upon which I am precluded from entering.

If we turn to the Church, we find her still regarded by ninety-nine hundredths of the people as our great bulwark against Popery; and her external repose during this long period of time was even still more unruffled than the repose of the political world. It must not, however, be supposed that the apparent torpor of the eighteenth century was inconsistent with practical religion. Clarissa Harlowe, as Mr. Froude points out, found daily service in the London churches as easily as she could now; and Cowper found the same at Huntington in 1765. This was not the case in rural parishes, it is true; but George Eliot testifies to the truly religious spirit of the English farmers and peasantry seventy and eighty years ago; and what they were then we may

reasonably conclude them to have been seventy and eighty years before. They had that kind of religiousness which springs from absolute belief in the doctrines of religion; and, when it is said that the eighteenth century was not an age of faith, the statement can only be received with considerable reservation, and in reference to a sphere of thought far removed above the level even of the middle classes. Controversial theologians admitted that no doctrine could be authorized by faith which was not accepted by rea

son.

But the great mass of the people knew nothing of such theories.

"To the masses of the English people," says Mr. Froude, "to the parishioners who gathered on Sunday into the churches, whose ideas were confined to the round of their common occupations, who never left their own neighborhood, never saw a newspaper or read a book but the Bible and the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' the main facts of the Gospel history were as indisputably true as the elementary laws of the universe. That Christ had risen from the dead was as true as that the sun had risen that morning. That they would themselves rise was as certain as that they would die, and as positively would one day be called to judgment for the good or ill they had done in life."

And as was their religious, so was their moral repose. No troublesome doubts, no distracting newspapers, found their way into those peaceful villages, where parson and squire, farmer and laborer, made up a little community by themselves, self-contained, self-governed, satisfied with themselves and with each other, and knowing nothing of and caring nothing for the great world outside. The natural and "underived" authority of the gentry and clergy was as unquestioned as the law which they administered, or the doctrines which they preached. One generation succeeded to another, but life continued just the same. The old man saw in his age the things which he had seen in his youth. That longing for confirmed tranquillity which Wordsworth speaks of as one of the strongest instincts of our nature might then be satisfied. At the present day we never know how soon any of our old landmarks, be they customs, institutions, beliefs, or even the mere features of nature, may be ruthlessly demolished. We scarcely dare allow our affections to go out from us to twine themselves round any external object, for fear it should be suddenly torn up. To be afraid to love anything for fear we should be obliged to mourn for it is one form of human unhappiness for which heavy compensation of some kind is due to us at the hands of progress. The eighteenth century had little progress; but then it had little worry, and no doubt. The most ardent Ritualist nowadays, says the

essayist already quoted, feels that the ground is hollow under him. The most ardent Conservative knows that institutions are everywhere on their trial, that authority is everywhere disputed, that subordination is everywhere derided. But to the men of the eighteenth century none of these disquieting elements presented themselves. Everything around them spoke of permanence, stability, and security; institutions were regarded as facts about which it was ridiculous to argue. It was not supposed possible that we could do without the Church and the monarchy. There was a reality and solidity about men's convictions in those days which must have been a great source of moral and intellectual comfort. Happy they who lived in the prescientific age! Happy Old Leisure, sauntering by his garden wall, and picking the leaves off the apricots! Happy old vicar, smoking his pipe in peace, unvexed of Darwins and Colensos, scratching the head of his faithful old brown setter, with his old single-barreled flint-and-steel in the corner by his side!

has till quite recent times esteemed highly beneficial to society, the eighteenth century was more largely endowed than its successor-I mean respect for law and constituted authority as such, and that kind of rational self-knowledge which recognizes the facts of human nature, and not only sees nothing degrading in subordination, but accepts it as the one essential principle of all permanent political communities. This, too, is earnestness of its kind—a determination not to be turned away from facing realities by any flattering or sentimental theories which rest on no visible foundation. I hope I shall not be so far misunderstood as to be supposed to deny that there is any other kind of earnestness. There is the earnestness of inquiry and curiosity-the earnestness which seeks the law within the law. But there is also the earnestness which comes of a simple desire to perform our allotted duties under the system of things which we find to be in existence, and asks for no higher satisfaction than the consciousness of having been successful. I cannot help thinking that of this kind of earnestness there was rather more in the last century than there is in the present. The motto of Englishmen then was Spartam nactus orna. And it was, I think, the mixture of this simple sense of duty with the coarser moral fiber of the period which produced such men as Clive and Hastings, and many of our great Indian and colonial administrators, with whom their duty to their country was an all-sufficient motive of action, and ample warrant for the means they might adopt in the discharge of it.

A good many words and phrases which were once held in high honor in the country have been turned into ridicule by the choicer religious spirits of our own time. Among these "the sober piety" of our ancestors has come in for its full share of laughter, and has been associated in people's minds with square, high-backed pews, fiddles and bassoons in the gallery, nasal responses pronounced by the clerk alone, and a good deal of sleeping during the sermon. Yet it is doubtful if more solid fruits were not borne by this uninteresting tree than are produced either by the fervor of Ritualism or the inspirations of "Humanity." Whether it is a fact or not that English work, for instance, has fallen off since the eighteenth century in thoroughness and honesty, I do not undertake to say; but the affirmative has been widely maintained, without, as far as I know, provoking any serious contradiction, and has been acknowledged with regret by some of the warmest friends and admirers of the working classes. The evil, however, if it really exist, is not confined to them. Small traders of every description are charged with selling and constructing articles which are not what they represent them to be; and that old English pride in a good piece of honest work which was once so general is said to be growing rarer and rarer. If so, I cannot imagine anything more calculated to make us doubtful of the superior religious earnestness of the present day. At all events, without proceeding any further with this comparison, I shall certainly claim for the eighteenth century its own fair share of earnestness both in religion and the duties of daily life.

And there is no doubt that in some other qualities which the general consent of mankind

es,

hanc

The coarseness of private manners was only one form of the general license which was the inevitable product of the Revolution. It was not till late in the eighteenth century that society began to recover from the moral shock occasioned by the rupture of old ties, the rejection of old sanctions, and the extinction of an old faith which followed that event. The ideal, romantic, or imaginative element-call it what you willhad been crushed out of Church and State with the expulsion of the Stuarts and the remodeling of our religious institutions on a rational basis. The inevitable result was an influx among the upper classes of both political and religious indifference, which, where it did not end in absolute skepticism, was wholly ineffectual against the temptations of the world and the flesh. The influence, in a word, of the English Revolution upon English morals was the influence of all revolutions upon all morals in all ages of the world. Political infidelity is their first fruit, and social license their second. The effect in England was visible of course long before the final act of that great drama. But with that period we are not concerned. A change began to show

some on occasion as the 'prentices of London were a century before. They had the right of free admission to the upper gallery of the theater. And when their riotous behavior made it necessary to expel them, in the year 1737, it was not done till five-and-twenty persons had been seriously injured. As they lived principally on board wages, they had their own clubs and taverns, as indeed they have now, where they swore, drank, and gambled like their betters. Of the grievous burden which the system of vails entailed upon the poorer class of visitors when money was worth nearly double what it is now, innumerable anecdotes remain. Of these the most amusing is of Steele and Bishop Hoadly visiting the Duke of Marlborough, when, on taking their departure through lines of rich liveries, Steele found he had not got money enough for the whole number, and made the servants a speech instead, complimenting them on their critical powers, and inviting them all gratis to Drury Lane Theater to whatever play they might choose to bespeak. The worst of it was that guests were expected to fee all the servants in the house, from the highest to the lowest; and Mr. Roberts has preserved a table of vails kept by one of the Burrell family, in which the gardeners, under-gardeners, undercook, errand-boy, and nurse figure with the chief domestics. The nuisance, however, was very tenacious of life, and is not dead yet. In fact, among one class of country servants, namely gamekeepers, it is hardly, if at all, abated.

Before quitting London for the country, as the Londoners themselves always did in the month of May, I may glance briefly at the literature of the age of which London was the center. We all know Macaulay's picture of the degraded condition of literature between the disappearance of the patron and the formation of a reading public, a period of time which may be said to extend from about 1720 to 1780. De Quincey, while denying that men of letters were worse off pecuniarily during this period than either before or since, declares that it was then that literature, "from being the noblest of professions, became a trade." He attributes the change to "expanding politics, expanding partisanship, and expanding journalism, which called into the field of literature an inferior class of laborers." This remark seems much too sweeping; and a better account is to be found in De Quincey's own remarks on the influence of novels upon literature. Politics and journalism have no doubt a tendency to debase literature, because, by using it as an instrument, they are compelled to recognize mediocrity. When political writing becomes one of the necessaries of society, like medicine or law, we must take what we can get; the very best, if possible; if not, what is pos

sible. But then, on the other hand, in political writing there is always scope for the very highest literary ability. In this country alone, take Swift, Bolingbroke, Chesterfield, Burke, and Junius, and consider what standards of political and periodical writing they have established, and we shall hardly say that the influence upon literature of "an expanding partisanship and expanding politics" has been wholly bad. With novels the reverse is the case. Journalism, if injurious to the dignity of literature, is favorable to the cultivation of style. Of fiction, on the other hand, if worthier to be called a fine art, the tendency is rather to neglect form. And, what is more, the popularity of fiction causes it to be chosen as a medium for the exposition of theories, which cannot fail to suffer in a literary sense from the atmosphere with which they are surrounded, though a larger number of readers may at the moment be secured for them. In the political and the religious novel of the present day, we see the system in operation. Yet who can doubt that the political principles recommended to us in "Coningsby" and "Sybil" could have been far more effectively presented in another shape? It was a necessary part of the author's purpose to secure for these theories as wide a circulation as possible; and he very wisely, therefore, sacrificed literary effect to the attainment of a higher object. But that it was a sacrifice I shall always continue to think. To mix love, and pleasure, and racing, and hunting with a fine political dissertation, is like putting sugar into dry sherry. More people will like it. But the wine is ruined.

Now in the eighteenth century this system was unknown; Essay kept herself to herself. And nobody can regret that we did not have the "Thoughts on the French Revolution," or the "Letter to a Noble Lord," in the form of a threevolume novel. The humor, the wit, and the singular dramatic power displayed in Lord Beaconsfield's novels, make it difficult to wish that they had been anything but what they are; but, as a general principle, controversy and fiction are not well suited to each other. The comparative effect upon literature of novels and newspapers would make an excellent subject for a special essay; but I cannot carry the subject any further at present, except to add that as the expansion of fiction has been more mischievous to style than the expansion of journalism, literary style in consequence is one of the accomplishments in which the last century was superior to the present one. Lord Macaulay, I suppose, is our great master of style; but then in Lord Macaulay's style the influence of journalism is conspicuous. It is the style of Dr. Johnson taken down from its pedestal and adapted to every-day life—to the time and the comprehension of cursory and hur