We are the English of the present day. We have
cows and calves, corn and cotton: we hate the
Russians; we know where the Crimea is; we
believe in Manchester the great. A large expanse is
around us; a fertile land of corn and orchards, and
pleasant hedgerows, and rising trees, and noble
prospects, and large black woods, and old church
towers. The din of great cities comes mellowed
from afar . . . We have before us a vast seat of
interest, and toil, and beauty, and power, and this
our own. Here is our home. Essay on Cowper

IT was a fortunate moment for a young man to decide
that he should live quietly and see what truth would
come to him, for, to the extent that one can talk of a national
mood, it would seem that the country itself had taken much
the same decision. England at the beginning of the fifties
was in some sense like a man recovering from a long fever.
As with a convalescent it is difficult to say at which precise
moment, 1846 or 1848 or 1851, the change from sickness
to health occurred: or what was effect and what was cause.
But within two or three years, somewhere between 1848 and
1851, the high temperature of political and religious argu-
ment, the superheated emotionalism of the Romantic era,
the threat of a crack in the whole structure of European
civilization, seemed to die out together, leaving men less
afraid--of change, of foreigners, of the working class--
than at any time since the French Revolution.

By 1852 a man could look back over the great political
debates, which had dominated public discussion for sixty

-69-