TH LIBERAL MOVEMENT IN English Literature BY WILLIAM JOHN COURTHOPE, M.A. AUTHOR OF 'THE PARADISE OF BIRDS' ETC. LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1885 All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Courthope, William John, 1842-1917. The liberal movement in English literature. 1. Liberalism--Gt. Brit. 2. English literature-- I. Title. ISBN 0-404-01784-3 Reprinted from the edition of 1885, London Manufactured in the United States of America International Standard Book Number: ANS PRESS INC. NEW YORK, N. Y. 10003 0-404-01784-3 So tenacious are we of our old ecclesiastical modes and fashions of institution, that very little change has been made in them since the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, adhering in this particular, as in all else, to our old settled maxim never entirely nor at once to depart from antiquity. We found these institutions on the whole favourable to morality and discipline, and we thought they were susceptible of amendment without altering the ground. We thought they were capable of receiving and meliorating and, above all, of preserving the accessories of science and literature as the order of Providence should successively produce them. And after all, with this Gothic and monkish education (for such it is in the groundwork), we may put in our claim to as ample and early a share in all the improvements in science, in arts, and in literature which have illuminated the modern world as any other nation in Europe. We think one main cause of this improvement was our not despising the patrimony of knowledge which was left us by our forefathers. BURKE, Reflections on the French Revolution. |