were over; the stagnation of the reign
of Walpole had not yet begun. There was a great outburst of intellectual
activity and aesthetic energy. The amazing discoveries of Newton seemed
to open out boundless possibilities of speculation; and in the meantime
the great nobles were building palaces and reviving the magnificence of
the Augustan Age, while men of letters filled the offices of State.
Never, perhaps, before or since, has England been so thoroughly English;
never have the national qualities of solidity and sense, independence of
judgment and idiosyncrasy of temperament, received a more forcible and
complete expression. It was the England of Walpole and Carteret, of
Butler and Berkeley, of Swift and Pope. The two works which, out of the
whole range of English literature, contain in a supreme degree those
elements of power, breadth, and common sense, which lie at the root of
the national genius--'Gulliver's Travels' and the 'Dunciad'--both
appeared during Voltaire's visit. Nor was it only in the high places of
the nation's consciousness that these signs were manifest; they were
visible everywhere, to every stroller through the London streets--in the
Royal Exchange, where all the world came crowding to pour its gold into
English purses, in the Meeting Houses of the Quakers, where the Holy
Spirit rushed forth untrammelled to clothe itself in the sober garb of
English idiom, and in the taverns of Cheapside, where the brawny
fellow-countrymen of Newton and Shakespeare sat, in an impenetrable
silence, over their English beef and English beer.

It was only natural that such a society should act as a powerful
stimulus upon the vivid temperament of Voltaire, who had come to it with
the bitter knowledge fresh in his mind of the medieval futility, the
narrow-minded cynicism of his own country. Yet the book which was the
result is in many ways a surprising one. It is almost as remarkable for
what it does not say as for what it does. In the first place, Voltaire
makes no attempt to give his readers an account of the outward surface,
the social and spectacular aspects of English life. It is impossible not
to regret this, especially since we know, from a delightful fragment
which was not published until after his death, describing his first
impressions on arriving in London, in how brilliant and inimitable a
fashion he would have accomplished the task. A full-length portrait of
Hanoverian England from the personal point of view,