y wore on,
introduced one reform after another, until many of those benefits were
attained or made possible which the present century almost
unconsciously enjoys. We should lose one of the most instructive
lessons which history can afford, if, with Carlyle, we should allow the
eighteenth century to lie "massed up in our minds as a disastrous,
wrecked inanity, not useful to dwell upon,"[90] The England of that
century was modern England, but modern England, burdened with a
heritage of corruption and ignorance which it is the glory of the time
to have in large part discarded. It was a time of social and material
progress, and it was also the period of the growth and perfection of
English fiction. To thoroughly understand the one, we must be
acquainted with the other, and it will be the object of the two
following chapters to trace the development of the English novel in
connection with that national development of which it will be shown to
be in great measure the exponent.

That subordination of the imagination to reason, which, after the
Restoration, became so marked in English thought on intellectual,
political, and religious subjects, was continued in the eighteenth
century with results which affected the whole current of national life.
Before the light of physical science, silent but irresistible in its
advances, faded away the remains of dogmatism and superstition.
Astrology was forgotten in astronomy; belief in modern miracles and
witchcraft ceased to take root in minds conscious of a universe too
vast for realization, and governed by laws so regular, that probability
could not attach to arbitrary interference by God or the devil. From
the broadening of the intellectual horizon finally resulted
inestimable benefits; but these benefits were purchased at the price of
much temporary evil. If in religion, the rational tendencies prepared
the way for the liberal and undogmatic Christianity to come, their
effect for many years was to be seen only in scepticism, in a mocking
indifference to religion itself, in a contempt of high moral
aspirations and sentiments. If in politics, the final effect of these
tendencies was to introduce new wisdom into government, they showed for
long no other result than the suppression of all the higher qualities
of a statesman, the disappearance of every sign of patriotism other
than an ignorant hatred of foreign countries, the complete subversion
of public spirit by private rapacity.

The