Four Lectures on the English Revolution

The period of which I am to speak is one of the most trodden grounds of history. It has not indeed the same intense attraction for an Englishman which the epoch of 1789 has for the Frenchman, for the interest in one case is purely historical, in the other it is that of a movement still in progress. Our revolution has long since run its round. The cycle was limited and belonged essentially to another world than that in which we live. Doubtless it was not insulated; its force has been felt throughout the subsequent series of political action and reaction, but the current along which European society is being now carried has another and a wider sweep. In the one we are ourselves too thoroughly absorbed to contemplate its course from without. From the other we have emerged far enough for our vision of it to be complete and steady.

But though this is so, and though the period in question is perhaps more familiar than any other to historical students, it may be doubted whether its character has ever been quite fairly exhibited. By partisans it has been regarded without ‘dry light,’ by judicious historians with a light so dry as not at all to illustrate the real temper and purpose of the actors. In reaction from the latter has appeared a mode of treatment, worked with special force by Mr. Carlyle, which puts personal character in the boldest relief, but overlooks the strength of circumstance, the organic life of custom and institution, which acts on the individual from without and from within, which at once informs his will and places it in limits against which it breaks itself in vain. Such oversight leaves out an essential element in the tragedy of human story. In modern life, as Napoleon said to Goethe, political necessity represents the destiny of the ancient drama. The historic hero, strong to make the world new, and exulting in his strength, has his inspiration from a past which he knows not, and is constructing a future which is not that of his own will or imagination. The providence which he serves works by longer and more ambiguous methods than suit his enthusiasm or impatience. Sooner or later the fatal web gathers round him too painfully to be longer disregarded, when he must either waste himself in ineffectual struggle with it, or adjust himself to it by a process which to his own conscience and in the judgment of men is one of personal debasement.