a single trait not authenticated
by ample testimony. In the meantime, we should see arts cultivated,
wealth accumulated, the conveniences of life improved. We should see the
keeps, where nobles, insecure themselves, spread insecurity around them,
gradually giving place to the halls of peaceful opulence, to the oriels
of Longleat, and the stately pinnacles of Burleigh. We should see towns
extended, deserts cultivated, the hamlets of fishermen turned into
wealthy havens, the meal of the peasant improved, and his hut more
commodiously furnished. We should see those opinions and feelings which
produced the great struggle against the House of Stuart slowly growing
up in the bosom of private families, before they manifested themselves
in parliamentary debates. Then would come the civil war. Those
skirmishes on which Clarendon dwells so minutely would be told, as
Thucydides would have told them, with perspicuous conciseness. They are
merely connecting links. But the great characteristics of the age, the
loyal enthusiasm of the brave English gentry, the fierce licentiousness
of the swearing, dicing, drunken reprobates, whose excesses disgraced
the royal cause,--the austerity of the Presbyterian Sabbaths in the
city, the extravagance of the independent preachers in the camp, the
precise garb, the severe countenance, the petty scruples, the affected
accent, the absurd names and phrases which marked the Puritans,--the
valour, the policy, the public spirit, which lurked beneath these
ungraceful disguises,--the dreams of the raving Fifth-monarchy-man, the
dreams, scarcely less wild, of the philosophic republican, all these
would enter into the representation, and render it at once more exact
and more striking.

The instruction derived from history thus written would be of a vivid
and practical character. It would be received by the imagination as well
as by the reason. It would be not merely traced on the mind, but branded
into it. Many truths, too, would be learned, which can be learned in
no other manner. As the history of states is generally written, the
greatest and most momentous revolutions seem to come upon them like
supernatural inflictions, without warning or cause. But the fact is,
that such revolutions are almost always the consequences of moral
changes, which have gradually passed on the mass of the community, and
which originally proceed far before their progress is indicated by any
public measure. An intimate knowledg