intuitive, trusting, ethical impulses of the soul. It tends to a wavering, uncertain and superficial sentiment on all questions that pertain to man and his destiny, a sentiment like that which pervades the Essay on Man, one of whose fundamental conclusions Pope is said to have exactly reversed under a transient wind of criticism. The philosophy of Locke, the science of Newton, the skepticism of Bolingbroke, were affiliated forces, largely good in themselves, with an immeasurable overbalance of good in their results; yet begetting an adventurous, uncertain, unbelieving temper, disinclined to pledge itself unreservedly to any spiritual faith, to any principle or precept of religious belief; and hence ready for a cool rendering of the heart, an outlook of immediate pleasure and comfort on society and art. There cannot be devotion, heroism, sacrifice in the primarily skeptical spirit; and hence there cannot be profound sympathy with that art in which the human soul is tossed by deep, unquiet emotions, refusing to be lulled into the rest of the passing hour, but seeming to feel far off forces at work below the horizon, the promises of invisible good, the presages of invisible evil. The things astir in the unseen world affect such a mind, and will not leave it solely attentive to the lazy, measured rhythm of a summer's day. It floats on a sea alive with the long swell of distant tempests. Science had begun its work of demolition; philosophy affrighted, was forsaking its own principles, and seeking grounds of alliance with the new tendencies; religion with too little power to modify its belief, to take new po

sitions, to reform and restate and redefend its principles, was losing hold on the minds of many, and, like a wall that is shaken, began to show unexpected traces of weakness and insecurity. It was ceasing to rule by authority, and had not yet learned to rule by reason. There was thus a loss in enthusiasm. Men were seized with worldly prudence, were not ready for the long ventures of the spiritual world, its patient waiting, and impalpable promises; they cast about them for a more immediate good, a more hasty and formal pleasure. This is the tendency which art, that has become artistic, exacting and sensitive, is ready to accept, finding its office in contributing a gloss of superficial excellence, an elegance open to the senses, which, if it holds no weighty claims against the future, redeems the present to good cheer and elegant culture. The lake ripples and sparkles in the sunshine, and we stop not to ask what skeletons of death are hidden under its waters. These were the days of unbelief and feeble belief that were later to call forth the reasonings of Butler, and the zeal of the Wesleys.

The political and social spirit which belonged to the reigns of William and Anne, was more vigorous and healthy than that of the previous period. The close, sultry, feverish air that attended on the Stuarts, surrounding them, like the pent-up breath of a night revel, to which the morning freshness of a new day has not yet found entrance, had begun to clear away. In the struggle of liberty, the circuit of aggression, resistance, reaction and compromise had been completed. The commonwealth

had been followed by the restoration; this in turn. intolerable had been succeeded by the revolution, and William came to the throne the representative of progressive and revolutionary, yet constitutional and monarchical, liberty. Thus was closed in mutual concession and the permanent gains of good government the most violent series of events that has fallen to the peaceful progress of England. The political parties of this reign ceased to be factions, and struggled with each other for the guidance of a government which neither proposed to modify or resist. The Tories by affiliation and descent had taken the place of the royalist. Their central idea was authority; for them the chief virtue of a subject was submission. This party was principally composed of intelligent and designing leaders, of ignorant and prejudiced followers. No party, as our own national experience abundantly shows us, responds with so firm and patient a front to the rallying cry, as one in which the cunning of the few is mated with the credulity of the many. It is this inevitable union of intrigue and ignorance that sustains selfish and unscrupulous power. Well might such a party urge passive submission; the high in state and church profited by it, the low knew no other loyalty or religion. The leaders gladly held what they had; the followers easily resigned what they never hoped to have. Words are better rallying forces than ideas for the masses of men; they involve for their partisans no discussions, and hence no divisions; they exact from chiefs no concessions, and hence look to no sacri

fices. All that was hereditary, stubborn, unconcessive and selfish in English society settled by its own weight and downward bent into the Tory party. All, on the other hand, that was liberal, active and progressive, yet sufficiently moderate to hope for power, belonged to the Whigs, the political descendants of the Round-heads. Parties bidding for power, eager-eyed for the possibilities of success, are always more or less corrupt, warped from their true tendencies. Individual ambition will strive to lay hold of and use the party organization for its own private ends. Submission will be enforced by urging the necessities of the party, and thus its unity and zeal will throw it only the more completely into the hands of the unscrupulous. The right to think is the right to bolt. Aside, however, from personal distractions, the central sympathy, the prevailing purpose of the Whigs, was constitutional liberty. They included the liberal, independent, thoughtful minds of the nation, the midway men, who have much to gain and much to lose, who love their own thoughts, and covet the power to form and execute their own plans. These two parties, Tory and Whig, representing the old extremes, had drawn so near together as to lay aside the sword, and enter on a perpetual parley of words and measures, a competition for the control of a sovereignty both were prepared to respect.

A corresponding improvement was taking place in public manners and morals. The literature of the period more than concurred with this; it advanced it in a positive way. The papers which

originated with Steele, and included the best efforts of Addison, were a social evangel. The corrupt dramatists of the previous reign, who owed so much of their taint to the court whose patronage they sought, had passed away. William, with little literary sympathy, did not merely bring with him a sounder, more wholesome life, one of more earnest and serviceable purposes, he was inclined to leave letters to a more independent and thus to a more healthy development. The neglect of courts is often better than their favor. The liberty and disinterestedness of art are both essential to its highest excellence. The moment it becomes a retainer, and is compelled to make itself agreeable, it loses the inspiration of freedom, the guidance of its own. creative insight. Patronage is to art a qualified good.

These papers, which now came forward to take the place in literary influence of the drama, and which present the prose of English literature in its very best dress, sprang from a broad, generous, and skilfully conceived purpose. They aimed at what they did much to accomplish, a social regeneration. They depended on the general patronage, taken in its most fluctuating form, and thus rested on their own merit. They were able to soften public sentiment, to correct taste, improve manners, and bear with them a genial ethical spirit, only as they could instruct and delight their readers, and increase their numbers. They were admirably fitted to this purpose. Short, returning at brief intervals, with no close connection and with great variety of contents,