ature represented by Cowley, and the name of
Milton unknown. The Puritan came as the physician; he brought his tonic
at the moment when lassitude and supineness would naturally have followed
upon a supreme display of racial vitality. Regret, if you will, that
England turned for her religion to the books of Israel; this suddenly
revealed sympathy of our race with a fierce Oriental theocracy is perhaps
not difficult to explain, but one cannot help wishing that its piety had
taken another form; later, there had to come the "exodus from
Houndsditch," with how much conflict and misery! Such, however, was the
price of the soul's health; we must accept the fact, and be content to
see its better meaning. Health, of course, in speaking of mankind, is
always a relative term. From the point of view of a conceivable
civilization, Puritan England was lamentably ailing; but we must always
ask, not how much better off a people might be, but how much worse. Of
all theological systems, the most convincing is Manicheism, which, of
course, under another name, was held by the Puritans themselves. What we
call Restoration morality--the morality, that is to say, of a king and
court--might well have become that of the nation at large under a Stuart
dynasty safe from religious revolution.

The political services of Puritanism were inestimable; they will be more
feelingly remembered when England has once more to face the danger of
political tyranny. I am thinking now of its effects upon social life. To
it we owe the characteristic which, in some other countries, is expressed
by the term English prudery, the accusation implied being part of the
general charge of hypocrisy. It is said by observers among ourselves
that the prudish habit of mind is dying out, and this is looked upon as a
satisfactory thing, as a sign of healthy emancipation. If by prude be
meant a secretly vicious person who affects an excessive decorum, by all
means let the prude disappear, even at the cost of some shamelessness.
If, on the other hand, a prude is one who, living a decent life,
cultivates, either by bent or principle, a somewhat extreme delicacy of
thought and speech with regard to elementary facts of human nature, then
I say that this is most emphatically a fault in the right direction, and
I have no desire to see its prevalence diminish. On the whole, it is the
latter meaning which certain foreigners have in mind when they speak of
English prudery--at