The English Church in the Eighteenth Century
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. The claim which the intellectual and religious life of England in the eighteenth century has upon our interest has been much more generally acknowledged of late years than was the case heretofore. There had been, for the most part, a disposition to pass it over somewhat slightly, as though the whole period were a prosaic and uninteresting one. Every generation is apt to depreciate the age which has so long preceded it as to have no direct bearing on present modes of life, but is yet not sufficiently distant as to have emerged into the full dignity of history. Besides, it cannot be denied that the records of the eighteenth century are, with two or three striking exceptions, not of a kind to stir the imagination. It was not a pictorial age; neither was it one of ardent feeling or energetic movement. Its special merits were not very obvious, and its prevailing faults had nothing dazzling in them, nothing that could be in any way called splendid; on the contrary, in its weaker points there was a distinctly ignoble element. The mainsprings of the religious, as well as of the political, life of the country were
not to call him Monsieur le comte; he wants to travel 'en cognito,'
and told me to be sure to say he would pay a handsome pourboire if he
was not recognized."
"So! Has this secret journey anything to do with the affair which Pere
Leger, the farmer at the Moulineaux, came to Paris the other day to
settle?"
"I don't know," replied the valet, "but the fat's in the fire. Last
night I was sent to the stable to order the Daumont carriage to be
ready to go to Presles at seven this morning. But when seven o'clock
came, Monsieur le comte countermanded it. Augustin, his valet de
chambre, attributes the change to the visit of a lady who called last
night, and again this morning,--he thought she came from the country."
"Could she have told him anything against Monsieur Moreau?--the best
of men, the most honest of men, a king of men, hey! He might have made
a deal more than he has out of his position, if he'd chosen; I can
tell you that."
"Then he was foolish," answered the valet, sententiously.
"Is Monsieur le Serizy going to live at Presles at last?" asked
Pierrotin; "for you know they have just repaired and refurnished the
chateau. Do you think it is true he has already spent two hundred
thousand francs upon it?"
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. The claim which the intellectual and religious life of England in the eighteenth century has upon our interest has been much more generally acknowledged of late years than was the case heretofore. There had been, for the most part, a disposition to pass it over somewhat slightly, as though the whole period were a prosaic and uninteresting one. Every generation is apt to depreciate the age which has so long preceded it as to have no direct bearing on present modes of life, but is yet not sufficiently distant as to have emerged into the full dignity of history. Besides, it cannot be denied that the records of the eighteenth century are, with two or three striking exceptions, not of a kind to stir the imagination. It was not a pictorial age; neither was it one of ardent feeling or energetic movement. Its special merits were not very obvious, and its prevailing faults had nothing dazzling in them, nothing that could be in any way called splendid; on the contrary, in its weaker points there was a distinctly ignoble element. The mainsprings of the religious, as well as of the political, life of the country were