strife began. The England
of Charles and Laud has been against you: the England of Hampden,
Milton, and Cromwell has in the main been on your side.

I say there has not been much ground for disappointment: I do not say
there has been none. England at present is not in her noblest mood. She
is laboring under a reaction which extends over France and great part of
Europe, and which furnishes the key at this moment to the state of
European affairs. This movement, like all great movements, reactionary
or progressive, is complex in its nature. In the political sphere it
presents itself as the lassitude and despondency which, as usual, have
ensued after great political efforts, such as were made by the
Continental nations in the abortive revolutions of 1848, and by England
in a less degree in the struggle for Parliamentary Reform. In the
religious sphere it presents itself in an analogous shape: there,
lassitude and despondency have succeeded to the efforts of the religious
intellect to escape from the decaying creeds of the old State Churches
and push forward to a more enduring faith; and the priest as well as the
despot has for a moment resumed his sway--though not his uncontested
sway--over our weariness and our fears. The moral sentiment, after high
tension, has undergone a corresponding relaxation. All liberal measures
are for the time at a discount. The Bill for the Abolition of
Church-Rates, once carried in the House of Commons by large majorities,
is now lost. The nominal leaders of the Liberal party themselves have
let their principles fall into abeyance, and almost coalesced with their
Tory opponents. The Whig nobles who carried the Reform Bill have owned
once more the bias of their order, and become determined, though covert,
enemies of Reform. The ancient altars are sought again for the sake of
peace by fainting spirits and perplexed minds; and again, as after our
Reformation, as after our great Revolution, we see a number of
conversions to the Church of Rome. On the other hand, strange physical
superstitions, such as mesmerism and spirit-rapping, have crept, like
astrology under the Roman Empire, into the void left by religious faith.
Wealth has been pouring into England, and luxury with wealth. Our public
journals proclaim, as you may perhaps have seen, that the society of our
capital is unusually corrupt. The comic as well as the serious signs of
the reaction appear everywhere. A tone of affected cynicism pervade