roachfully pointed at by all who feared or envied the greatness of
England.

Yet, unless I greatly deceive myself, the general effect of this
chequered narrative will be to excite thankfulness in all religious
minds, and hope in the breasts of all patriots. For the history of our
country during the last hundred and sixty years is eminently the history
of physical, of moral, and of intellectual improvement. Those who
compare the age on which their lot has fallen with a golden age which
exists only in their imagination may talk of degeneracy and decay: but
no man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to take
a morose or desponding view of the present.

I should very imperfectly execute the task which I have undertaken if
I were merely to treat of battles and sieges, of the rise and fall
of administrations, of intrigues in the palace, and of debates in the
parliament. It will be my endeavour to relate the history of the people
as well as the history of the government, to trace the progress of
useful and ornamental arts, to describe the rise of religious sects
and the changes of literary taste, to portray the manners of successive
generations and not to pass by with neglect even the revolutions which
have taken place in dress, furniture, repasts, and public amusements. I
shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity
of history, if I can succeed in placing before the English of the
nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors.

The events which I propose to relate form only a single act of a great
and eventful drama extending through ages, and must be very imperfectly
understood unless the plot of the preceding acts be well known. I shall
therefore introduce my narrative by a slight sketch of the history of
our country from the earliest times. I shall pass very rapidly over many
centuries: but I shall dwell at some length on the vicissitudes of that
contest which the administration of King James the Second brought to a
decisive crisis. [1]

Nothing in the early existence of Britain indicated the greatness which
she was destined to attain. Her inhabitants when first they became
known to the Tyrian mariners, were little superior to the natives of the
Sandwich Islands. She was subjugated by the Roman arms; but she
received only a faint tincture of Roman arts and letters. Of the western
provinces which obeyed the Caesars, she was the last that was conquered,