nglishmen.

In the latter half of the century the political and social progress is
almost bewildering. The modern form of cabinet government responsible to
Parliament and the people had been established under George I; and in 1757
the cynical and corrupt practices of Walpole, premier of the first Tory
cabinet, were replaced by the more enlightened policies of Pitt. Schools
were established; clubs and coffeehouses increased; books and magazines
multiplied until the press was the greatest visible power in England; the
modern great dailies, the _Chronicle, Post_, and _Times_, began their
career of public education. Religiously, all the churches of England felt
the quickening power of that tremendous spiritual revival known as
Methodism, under the preaching of Wesley and Whitefield. Outside her own
borders three great men--Clive in India, Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham,
Cook in Australia and the islands of the Pacific--were unfurling the banner
of St. George over the untold wealth of new lands, and spreading the
world-wide empire of the Anglo-Saxons.

LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS. In every preceding age we have noted especially
the poetical works, which constitute, according to Matthew Arnold, the
glory of English literature. Now for the first time we must chronicle the
triumph of English prose. A multitude of practical interests arising from
the new social and political conditions demanded expression, not simply in
books, but more especially in pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers. Poetry
was inadequate for such a task; hence the development of prose, of the
"unfettered word," as Dante calls it,--a development which astonishes us by
its rapidity and excellence. The graceful elegance of Addison's essays, the
terse vigor of Swift's satires, the artistic finish of Fielding's novels,
the sonorous eloquence of Gibbon's history and of Burke's orations,--these
have no parallel in the poetry of the age. Indeed, poetry itself became
prosaic in this respect, that it was used not for creative works of
imagination, but for essays, for satire, for criticism,--for exactly the
same practical ends as was prose. The poetry of the first half of the
century, as typified in the work of Pope, is polished and witty enough, but
artificial; it lacks fire, fine feeling, enthusiasm, the glow of the
Elizabethan Age and the moral earnestness of Puritanism. In a word, it
interests us as a study of life, rather than delights or inspires us by its
appeal to