ed, instead of being enlarged and deepened. In
whatever other respects during the years that followed it fulfilled some
portion of its mission, it certainly lost, through its own want of
energy, a great part of the influence it had enjoyed at this earlier
date.

The first twenty years of the period include also a principal part of
the history of the Nonjurors. Later in the century, they had entirely
drifted away from any direct association with the Established Church.
Their numbers had dwindled; and as there seemed to be no longer any
tangible reason for their continued schism, sympathy with them had also
faded away. There are some interesting incidents in their later history,
but these are more nearly related to the annals of the Episcopal Church
of Scotland than to our own. Step by step in the earlier years of the
century the ties which linked them with the English Church were broken.
First came the death of the venerable bishops, Ken and Frampton; then
the return to the established communion of Nelson, and Dodwell, and
other moderate Nonjurors; then the wilful perpetuation of the schism by
the consecration of bishops; then the division into two parties of those
who adopted the Communion Book of Edward VI., with its distinctive
usages, and those who were opposed to any change. All this took place
before 1718. By that time the schism was complete.

One more characteristic feature of the early part of the century must be
mentioned. The essayists belong not only to the social history of the
period, but also to that of the Church. Few preachers were so effective
from their pulpits as were Addison and his fellow-contributors in the
pages of the 'Spectator' and other kindred serials. It was not only in
those Saturday papers which were specially devoted to graver musings
that they served the cause of religion and morality. They were true sons
of the Church; and if they did not go far below the surface, nor profess
to do more as a rule than satirise follies and censure venial forms of
vice, their tone was ever that of Christian moralists. They did no
scanty service as mediators, so to say, between religion and the world.
This phase of literature lived on later into the century, but it became
duller and less popular. It never again was what it had been in
Addison's time, and never regained more than a small fraction of the
social power which it had then commanded.

After Queen Anne's reign, the main interest of English Churc