stirring events in
abundance in which England played its part, for the century gives, at a
rough calculation, 56 years of war to 44 years of peace, while the
reign of George III. had 37 years of war and 23 years of peace--the
longest period of peace being 10 years, and of war 24 years
(1793-1816). But in all these stirring events, there was, in the
greater part of the reign, at least, and notwithstanding some
murmurings, the appearance of a solidity in the Constitution which has
somehow settled down into the tradition of "the good old times." A
cynic might have described the Constitution as resting upon empty
bottles and blunder-busses, for was it not the great "three-bottle
period" of the British aristocracy? and as for the masses, the only
national sentiment in common was that of military glory earned by
British heroes in foreign wars. In more domestic affairs, it was a
long hum-drum grind in settled grooves--deep ruts in fact--from which
there seemed no escape. Yet it was a period in which great forces had
their birth--forces which were destined to exercise the widest
influence upon our national, social, and even domestic affairs. Adam
Smith's great work on the causes of the wealth of nations planted a
life-germ of progressive thought which was to direct men's minds into
what, strange as it may seem, was almost a new field of research, viz.,
the relation of cause and effect, and was commercially almost as much a
new birth and the opening of a flood gate of activity, as was that of
the printing press at the close of the Middle Ages; and, this once set
in motion, a good many other things seemed destined to follow.

What a host of things which now seem a necessary part of our daily
lives were then in a chrysalis state! But the bandages were visibly
cracking in all directions. Literature was beginning those {2}
desperate efforts to emerge from the miseries of Grub Street, to go in
future direct to the public for its patrons and its market, and to
bring into quiet old country towns like Royston at least a newspaper
occasionally. In the political world Burke was writing his "Thoughts
on the present Discontents," and Francis, or somebody else, the
"Letters of Junius." Things were, in fact, showing signs of commencing
to move, though slowly, in the direction of that track along which
affairs have sometimes in these latter days moved with an
ill-considered haste which savours almost as much of what is called
politi