picturesque recital of the Seven Years War, and of England's share in
it; while the earlier relations of England and Frederick may be studied
more coolly and thoroughly in Ranke's "Nine Books of Prussian History,"
published in an English version under the name of his "History of
Prussia." The earlier part of the "Annual Register," which begins in
1758, has been attributed to Burke. Southey's biography, or the more
elaborate life by Tyerman, gives an account of Wesley and the movement
he headed.

CHAPTER I

THE RESTORATION

1660-1667

[Sidenote: The New England.]

The entry of Charles the Second into Whitehall marked a deep and lasting
change in the temper of the English people. With it modern England
began. The influences which had up to this time moulded our history, the
theological influence of the Reformation, the monarchical influence of
the new kingship, the feudal influence of the Middle Ages, the yet
earlier influence of tradition and custom, suddenly lost power over the
minds of men. From the moment of the Restoration we find ourselves all
at once among the great currents of thought and activity which have gone
on widening and deepening from that time to this. The England around us
becomes our own England, an England whose chief forces are industry and
science, the love of popular freedom and of law, an England which
presses steadily forward to a larger social justice and equality, and
which tends more and more to bring every custom and tradition,
religious, intellectual, and political, to the test of pure reason.

Between modern thought, on some at least of its more important sides,
and the thought of men before the Restoration there is a great gulf
fixed. A political thinker in the present day would find it equally hard
to discuss any point of statesmanship with Lord Burleigh or with Oliver
Cromwell. He would find no point of contact between their ideas of
national life or national welfare, their conception of government or the
ends of government, their mode of regarding economical and social
questions, and his own. But no gulf of this sort parts us from the men
who followed the Restoration. From that time to this, whatever
differences there may have been as to the practical conclusions drawn
from them, there has been a substantial agreement as to the grounds of
our political, our social, our intellectual, and religious life. Paley
would have found no difficulty in understanding Tillotson. New