s adopted. History, he says, may be written in two
ways--you may relate each event in chronological order, or you may
deal with each subject in a separate episode--and he tells us that he
has chosen the latter way. This method enabled him to introduce
sketches of the state of English society at different periods, by way
of illustrating his narrative, which are certainly attractive and
impressive. They are composed to a large degree upon the model set by
Macaulay, by grouping together a number of characteristic particulars
to bring out into strong relief the morals and manners of the time.
Walpole's picture of the Eton boy in the early nineteenth century, who
could write admirable Greek and Latin verse but knew not a word of any
modern language--'who regarded the Gracchi as patriots but had only an
obscure notion that Adam Smith was a dangerous character'--is almost a
parody of Macaulay's style. Nevertheless these sketches are on the
whole truthful and instructive, if we allow for some exuberance of
colouring that may have been thought necessary for artistic effect.

But Walpole studied literature, as the measure of intellectual
evolution, with the same interest that he devoted to economical and
administrative developments. His aim was to show how all kinds of
mental and material activity acted and reacted upon each other, how
the feelings and aspirations of the nation were reflected in
philosophy and in poetry, and how literary genius could stir the
imagination of the people. He observes that while English literature
had declined towards the close of the eighteenth century, it rose
again rapidly with the opening of the nineteenth century. For a short
time, indeed, the furious outbreak of the French Revolution had scared
men of letters into recoil from the optimistic speculations of the
preceding age--they abandoned the worship of Liberty. But the storm
blew over; and a general revival of literary animation signalised the
end of the long war-time, with a magnificent efflorescence of poetry.
Walpole records, as notable signs of this intellectual expansion, the
appearance of women in the field of literature, the immediate success
of the two famous reviews, the _Edinburgh_ and the _Quarterly_, and
the rapid growth of journalism. The whole subject of mental progress
has, indeed, a peculiar charm for him. He insists that 'the history of
human thought is the most comprehensive and the most difficult subject
which can occupy th