VII. THE LAST EFFORTS OF DIPLOMACY.

NOTES.




HENRY VIII

CHAPTER I

SOCIAL CONDITION OF ENGLAND IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

In periods like the present, when knowledge is every day extending, and the
habits and thoughts of mankind are perpetually changing under the influence
of new discoveries, it is no easy matter to throw ourselves back into a
time in which for centuries the European world grew upon a single type, in
which the forms of the father's thoughts were the forms of the son's, and
the late descendant was occupied in treading into paths the footprints of
his distant ancestors. So absolutely has change become the law of our
present condition, that it is identified with energy and moral health; to
cease to change is to lose place in the great race; and to pass away from
off the earth with the same convictions which we found when we entered it,
is to have missed the best object for which we now seem to exist.

It has been, however, with the race of men as it has been with the planet
which they inhabit. As we look back over history, we see times of change
and progress alternating with other times when life and thought have
settled into permanent forms; when mankind, as if by common consent, have