ought to limit the royal power in the interests of
Parliament and the people; and the Tories, who strove to check the growing
power of the people in the interests of their hereditary rulers. Both
parties, however, were largely devoted to the Anglican Church; and when
James II, after four years of misrule, attempted to establish a national
Catholicism by intrigues which aroused the protest of the Pope[171] as well
as of Parliament, then Whigs and Tories, Catholics and Protestants, united
in England's last great revolution.

The complete and bloodless Revolution of 1688, which called William of
Orange to the throne, was simply the indication of England's restored
health and sanity. It proclaimed that she had not long forgotten, and could
never again forget, the lesson taught her by Puritanism in its hundred
years of struggle and sacrifice. Modern England was firmly established by
the Revolution, which was brought about by the excesses of the Restoration.

LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS. In the literature of the Restoration we note a
sudden breaking away from old standards, just as society broke away from
the restraints of Puritanism. Many of the literary men had been driven out
of England with Charles and his court, or else had followed their patrons
into exile in the days of the Commonwealth. On their return they renounced
old ideals and demanded that English poetry and drama should follow the
style to which they had become accustomed in the gayety of Paris. We read
with astonishment in Pepys's _Diary_ (1660-1669) that he has been to see a
play called _Midsummer Night's Dream_, but that he will never go again to
hear Shakespeare, "for it is the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I
saw in my life." And again we read in the diary of Evelyn,--another writer
who reflects with wonderful accuracy the life and spirit of the
Restoration,--"I saw _Hamlet_ played; but now the old plays begin to
disgust this refined age, since his Majesty's being so long abroad." Since
Shakespeare and the Elizabethans were no longer interesting, literary men
began to imitate the French writers, with whose works they had just grown
familiar; and here begins the so-called period of French influence, which
shows itself in English literature for the next century, instead of the
Italian influence which had been dominant since Spenser and the
Elizabethans.

One has only to consider for a moment the French writers of this period,
Pascal, Bossuet, Fenelon,