ed. The external appearance of
England presented a new aspect. A fourth part of the whole land was
redeemed from waste and put under cultivation.[116] The advance in
agriculture and manufactures, making necessary better means of
communication, introduced canals and substituted fine highways for the
old muddy, robber-infested roads. The condition of these as late as
1736 may be inferred from that of the road between Kensington and
London: "The road between this place and London is grown so infamously
bad, that we live here in the same solitude as we should do if cast on
a rock in the middle of the ocean, and all the Londoners tell us there
is between them and us a great, impassable gulf of mud. There are two
roads through the Park, but the new one is so convex and the old one so
concave, that by this extreme of faults they agree in the common one of
being, like the high-road, impassable."[117]

Social life was marked by the same corruption, by the same absence of
high aspirations and standards which we have seen in politics. The
nation, especially the higher ranks, had not recovered from the license
of the Restoration, while the agencies which can preserve virtue and
refinement in a society were almost inactive. Religion, partly in
consequence of the reaction which followed the civil wars, and partly
in consequence of the spread of rational tendencies, had lost its hold
on society, and no longer sufficed to keep it in check. Theological
controversy, although it issue in narrowness and persecution, yet has
the merit of keeping alive an appreciation of high moral qualities and
aims. In the absence of strong religious feeling, there is yet in the
human mind a natural preference for what is beautiful and honorable,
usually taking the form of ideals, which may keep up a social tone.
This may be seen in the age of Elizabeth, not a very religious period,
but one in which poetry and elevation of thought overshadow coarseness
and immorality. The nineteenth century, again, is neither marked by
strong religious feelings nor by any great tendency to idealization.
And yet the nineteenth century has its standard, firmly based on public
opinion, made up of a respect for decency and justice, a love of
refinement, and an appreciation of the expediency as well as the
attractiveness of virtue; a standard which influences many minds over
which religion has little control. But in the earlier part of the
eighteenth century, religion had cease