tions, yielded to the social influences of a vicious age, and reproduced in his verse the wayward wavering of the English court between Protestantism and the Roman Catholic

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worship, between voluptuousness and faith; least read, because least truly national. And Pope was the cherished poet of English aristocratic life, as it existed in the time of Bolingbroke and Walpole; flattering the great with sarcasms against kings; an optimist, proclaiming order as the first law of Heaven. None of all these, not even Milton, provoked to the overthrow of the institutions of England.

Nor had the skepticism of modern philosophy penetrated the mass of the nation, or raised vague desires of revolution. It kept, rather, what was held to be the best company. It entered the palace during the licentiousness of the two former reigns; and though the court was now become decorous and devout, still the nobility, and those who in that day were called "the great," affected free-thinking as a mark of high breeding, and laughed at the evidence of piety in any one of their order. But the spirit of the people rebelled against materialism; if worship, as conducted in the parish church, had no attractive warmth, they gathered round the preacher in the fields, eager to be assured that they had within themselves a spiritual nature and a warrant for their belief in immortality; yet, under the moderating influence of Wesley, giving the world the unknown spectacle of a fervid reform in religion, combined with unquestioning deference to authority in the state.

English metaphysical philosophy itself bore a character of moderation analogous to English institutions. In disregard to the traditions of the Catholic Church, Locke had denied that thought implies an immaterial substance; and Hartley and Priestley asserted that the soul was but of flesh and blood; but the more genial Berkeley, armed with "every virtue," insisted rather on the certain existence of the intellectual world alone; while, from the bench of English bishops, Butler pressed the analogies of the material creation itself into the service of spiritual life, and, with the authority of reason, taught the supremacy of conscience. If Hume

embodied the logical consequences of the sensuous philosophy in the most skilfully constructed system of idealism which the world had ever known, his own countryman, Reid, in works worthy to teach the youth of a republic, illustrated the active powers of man and the reality of right; Adam Smith found a criterion of duty in the universal sentiment of mankind; and the English dissenter, Price, enforced the eternal, necessary, and unchanging distinctions of morality. So philosophic freedom in Britain rebuked its own excesses, and, self-balanced and self-restrained, never sought to throw down the august fabric which had for so many centuries stood before Europe as the citadel of liberty.

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The blended respect for aristocracy and for popular rights was impressed upon the courts of law. They were charged with the protection of every individual without distinction, securing to the accused a trial by sworn men, who were taken from among his peers, and held their office for but one short term of service. And especially the judges watched over the personal liberty of every Englishman, with power on the instant to set free any one illegally imprisoned, even though in custody by the king's express command.

At the same time, the judiciary, with a reputation for impartiality, in the main well deserved, was by its nature conservative, and by its constitution the associate and the support of the house of lords. Westminster Hall, which had stood through many revolutions and many dynasties, and was become venerable from an unchanged existence of five hundred years, sent the first officer in one of its courts, from however humble an origin he might have sprung, to take precedence of the nobility of the realm, and act as president of the chamber of peers. That branch of the legislature derived an increase of its dignity from the great lawyers whom the crown, from time to time, was accustomed to ennoble; and, moreover, it formed of itself a part of the judicial system. The house of commons, whose members, from their frequent elections, best knew the temper of the people, possessed exclusively the right to origi

nate votes of supply; but the final judgment on all questions of law respecting property rested with the house of lords. The same cast of aristocracy, intermingled with popularity, pervaded the systems of education. From climate, compact population, and sober national character, England was capable beyond any other country in the world of a system of popular education. Nevertheless, it had none. The mass of its people was left igno

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rant how to read or write.

But the benevolence of Catholic ages, emulated also in later times, had benefited science by endowments, which in their conception were charity schools, founded by piety for the education of poor men's sons; where a place might sometimes be awarded to favor, but advancement could be obtained only by merit, and the sons of the aristocracy, having no seminaries of their own, grouped themselves, as at Eton or Westminster or Harrow or Winchester, round the body of the scholars on the foundation; submitting like them to the accustomed discipline, even to the use of the rod, at which none rebelled, since it fell alike on all.

The same constitution marked the universities. The best scholars on the foundation were elected from the public schools to the scholarships in the several colleges; and formed the central influence of industry, order, and ambition, round which the sons of the opulent clustered. Thus the genius of the past claimed the right to linger in the streets of medieval Oxford; and the sentiment of loyalty, as in earlier days, still hovered over the meadows of Christ Church and the walks of Maudlin; but, if the two universities were both loyal to the throne and devoted to the church, it was from their own free choice, and not from deference to authority or command. They had proved their independence and had resisted kings. If they were swayed on the surface by ministerial influences, they were at heart intrac table and self-determined. The king could neither appoint their officers nor prescribe their studies, nor control their government nor administer their funds. The endowments of the colleges, which, in their origin, were the gifts of piety and charity, were held as property, independent of the

state; and were as sacred as the estates of any one of the landed gentry. The sons of the aristocracy might sometimes be prize-men at Oxford or wranglers at Cambridge; but, if they won collegiate honors, it was done fairly by merit alone. In the pursuit, the eldest sons of 1763. peers stood on no vantage-ground over the humblest commoner; so that the universities in their whole organization upheld the institutions of England, and found in them the security of their own privileges.

It might be supposed that the gates of the cities would have been barred against the influence of the aristocracy; but it was not so. That influence was interwoven with the prosperity of the towns. Entails were not perpetual; land was always in the market; estates were often encumbered; and the national debt, which was intimately connected with all private credit and commercial transactions, was in fact a mortgage upon all the soil of the kingdom. The swelling expenses of the government increased its dependence on the moneyed class; and the leading minister needed the confidence of the city as well as of the country and the court. Besides, it was not uncommon to see a wealthy citizen toiling to amass yet greater wealth, that he might purchase land and found a family; or giving his richly dowered daughter in marriage to a peer. Everybody formed a part of the aristocratic organization: a few desired to enter the higher class; the rest sought fortune in serving it.

Moreover, the interests of the trade of the nation had precedence of the political interests of the princes. The members of the legislature watched popular excitements, and listened readily to the petitions of the merchants; and these, in their turn, did not desire to see one of their own number charged with the conduct of the finances as chancellor of the exchequer, but wished rather for some member of the aristocracy, friendly to their interests. They preferred to speak through such a one, and rebelled against the necessity of doing so as little as they did at the employment of a barrister to plead their cause in the halls of justice.

But, if aristocracy was not excluded from towns, still more

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did it pervade the rural life of England. The climate was not only softened by the milder atmosphere that belongs to the western side of masses of land, but was further modified by the proximity of every part of it to the sea. It knew neither long continuing heat nor cold; and was more friendly to daily employment throughout the whole year, within doors or without, than any in Europe. The island was "a little world" of its own, with a "happy breed of men for its inhabitants, in whom the hardihood of the Norman was intermixed with the gentler qualities of the Celt and the Saxon, just as nails are rubbed into steel to temper and harden the Damascus blade. They loved country life, of which the mildness of the clime increased the charms; since every grass and flower and tree that had its home between the remote north and the neighborhood of the tropics would live abroad, and, such only excepted as needed a hot sun to unfold their bloom or fix their aroma or ripen their fruit, would thrive in perfection: so that no region could show such a varied wood. The moisture of the sky favored a soil not naturally very rich, and clothed the earth in perpetual verdure. Nature had its attractions even in winter. The ancient trees were stripped indeed of their foliage, but showed more clearly their fine proportions and the undisturbed nests of the noisy rooks among their boughs; the air was so mild that the flocks and herds still grazed on the freshly springing herbage; and the deer found shelter enough by crouching amongst the fern; the smoothly shaven grassy walk was soft and yielding under the foot; nor was there a month in the year in which the plough was idle. The large landed proprietors dwelt often in houses which had descended to them from the times when England was gemmed all over with the most delicate and most solid structures of Gothic art. Estates were bounded by the same hedges and ditches, counties by the same lanes, as in William the Conqueror's time; and water-wheels revolved to grind corn just where they had been doing so for at least eight hundred years. Hospitality had its traditions; and for untold centuries Christmas had been the most joyous of the seasons.