otonous.

IV.

But even yet we have not realised the full benefit of those early
polities and those early laws. They not only 'bound up' men in groups,
not only impressed on men a certain set of common usages, but often, at
least in an indirect way, suggested, if I may use the expression,
national character.

We cannot yet explain--I am sure, at least, I cannot attempt to
explain--all the singular phenomena of national character: how
completely and perfectly they seem to be at first framed; how slowly,
how gradually they can alone be altered, if they can be altered at all.
But there is one analogous fact which may help us to see, at least
dimly, how such phenomena are caused. There is a character of ages, as
well as of nations; and as we have full histories of many such periods,
we can examine exactly when and how the mental peculiarity of each
began, and also exactly when and how that mental peculiarity passed
away. We have an idea of Queen Anne's time, for example, or of Queen
Elizabeth's time, or George II.'s time; or again of the age of Louis
XIV., or Louis XV., or the French Revolution; an idea more or less
accurate in proportion as we study, but probably even in the minds who
know these ages best and most minutely, more special, more simple, more
unique than the truth was. We throw aside too much, in making up our
images of eras, that which is common to all eras. The English character
was much the same in many great respects in Chaucer's time as it was in
Elizabeth's time or Anne's time, or as it is now; But some qualities
were added to this common element in one era and some in another; some
qualities seemed to overshadow and eclipse it in one era, and others in
another. We overlook and half forget the constant while we see and
watch the variable. But--for that is the present point--why is there
this variable? Everyone must, I think, have been puzzled about it.
Suddenly, in a quiet time--say, in Queen Anne's time--arises a special
literature, a marked variety of human expression, pervading what is
then written and peculiar to it: surely this is singular.

The true explanation is, I think, something like this. One considerable
writer gets a sort of start because what he writes is somewhat
more--only a little more very often, as I believe--congenial to the
minds around him than any other sort. This writer is very often not the
one whom posterity remembers--not the one who carries the style of the
age farthes