yet not disinclined to it”.  Gradually, however, a strong Evangelic spirit (as we should now speak) and a still stronger anti-Papal spirit entered into the middle sort of Englishmen, and added to that force, fibre, and substance which they have never wanted, an ideal warmth and fervour which they have almost always wanted.  Hence the saying that Cromwell founded the English Constitution.  Of course, in seeming, Cromwell’s work died with him; his dynasty was rejected, his republic cast aside; but the spirit which culminated in him never sank again, never ceased to be a potent, though often a latent and volcanic force in the country.  Charles II. said that he would never go again on his travels for anything or anybody; and he well knew that though the men whom he met at Worcester might be dead, still the spirit which warmed them was alive and young in others.

But the Cromwellian republic and the strict Puritan creed were utterly hateful to most Englishmen.  They were, if I may venture on saying so, like the “Rouge” element in France and elsewhere—­the sole revolutionary force in the entire State, and were hated as such.  That force could do little of itself; indeed, its bare appearance tended to frighten and alienate the moderate and dull as well as the refined and reasoning classes.  Alone it was impotent against the solid clay of the English apathetic nature.  But give this fiery element a body of decent-looking earth; give it an excuse for breaking out on an occasion, when the decent, the cultivated, and aristocratic classes could join with it, and they would conquer by means of it, and it could be disguised in their covering.

Such an excuse was found in 1688.  James II., by incredible and pertinacious folly, irritated not only the classes which had fought against his father, but also those who had fought for his father.  He offended the Anglican classes as well as the Puritan classes; all the Whig nobles, and half the Tory nobles, as well as the dissenting bourgeois.  The rule of Parliament was established by the concurrence of the usual supporters of royalty with the usual opponents of it.  But the result was long weak.  Our revolution has been called the minimum of a revolution, because in law, at least, it only changed the dynasty, but exactly on that account it was the greatest shock to the common multitude, who see the dynasty but see nothing else.  The support of the main aristocracy held together the bulk of the deferential classes, but it held them together imperfectly, uneasily, and unwillingly.  Huge masses of crude prejudice swayed hither and thither for many years.  If an able Stuart had with credible sincerity professed Protestantism probably he might have overturned the House of Hanover.  So strong was inbred reverence for hereditary right, that until the accession of George III. the English Government was always subject to the unceasing attrition of a competitive sovereign.