gathered together the scattered rays of his English impressions into a
focus of brilliant and burning intensity. It so happened that the nation
into whose midst he had plunged, and whose characteristics he had
scrutinised with so avid a curiosity, had just reached one of the
culminating moments in its history. The great achievement of the
Revolution and the splendid triumphs of Marlborough had brought to
England freedom, power, wealth, and that sense of high exhilaration
which springs from victory and self-confidence. Her destiny was in the
hands of an aristocracy which was not only capable and enlightened, like
most successful aristocracies, but which possessed the peculiar
attribute of being deep-rooted in popular traditions and popular
sympathies and of drawing its life-blood from the popular will. The
agitations of the reign of Anne were over; the stagnation of the reign
of Walpole had not yet begun. There was a great outburst of intellectual
activity and aesthetic energy. The amazing discoveries of Newton seemed
to open out boundless possibilities of speculation; and in the meantime
the great nobles were building palaces and reviving the magnificence of
the Augustan Age, while men of letters filled the offices of State.
Never, perhaps, before or since, has England been so thoroughly English;
never have the national qualities of solidity and sense, independence of
judgment and idiosyncrasy of temperament, received a more forcible and
complete expression. It was the England of Walpole and Carteret, of
Butler and Berkeley, of Swift and Pope. The two works which, out of the
whole range of English literature, contain in a supreme degree those
elements of power, breadth, and common sense, which lie at the root of
the national genius--'Gulliver's Travels' and the 'Dunciad'--both
appeared during Voltaire's visit. Nor was it only in the high places of
the nation's consciousness that these signs were manifest; they were
visible everywhere, to every stroller through the London streets--in the
Royal Exchange, where all the world came crowding to pour its gold into