is republican dreams
gradually giving way to a settled conservatism, and the fruit of that
disappointed first-love of liberty received with unmeasured opposition
from the old school in literary criticism represented by Jeffrey and
the _Edinburgh Review_, with the result that those in high places for
long refused to listen to one who had the magical power of unlocking
the sweet ministries of Nature as no other poet of the century had.

Other ardent spirits had their dreams too, and for a short time at
least there was a sympathy with the French, among many of the English,
which left its traces in local centres like Royston--quite an
intellectual centre in those days--and was in striking contrast with
that hatred of the French which was so soon to settle over England
under the Napoleonic _regime_. But, if many of the English people,
weary of the increasing burdens which fell upon them, had their dreams
of a good time coming, they, instead of following the mere glimmer of
the will-o'-the-wisp, across the darkness of their lot, responded
rather to signs of coming activities. Through the darkness they saw
perhaps nothing very striking, but they _felt_ occasionally the thrill
of coming activities which were struggling for birth in that pregnant
mother-night which seemed to be shrouding the sunset of the
century--and they were saved from the immediate horrors of a
revolution. Feudalism and the Pope had left our fathers obedience, _en
masse_, and Luther had planted hope through the reformation of the
individual. So the great wave of aspiration after a patent scheme of
universal brotherhood passed over the people of these realms with only
a wetting of the spray. Here and there was a weak reflection of the
drama, in the calling of hard names, and the taunt of "Jacobin," thrown
in the teeth of those who might have sympathised with the French in the
earlier stages of the Revolution, was sometimes heard in the streets of
Royston for many years after the circumstances which called it forth
had passed away.

I have referred thus fully to what may seem a general rather than a
local question, because the town of Royston, then full of aspirations
after reform, was looked upon almost as a hot-bed of what were called
"dangerous principles" by those attached to the old order of things,
and because it may help us to understand something of the excitement
occasioned by the free expression of opinions in the public debates
which took pla