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THE

LIBERAL MOVEMENT IN ENGLISH

LITERATURE

AMS PRESS

NEW YORK

PRINTED BY

SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE

LONDON

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--
19th century--History and criticism.

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I. Title.
72-458

ISBN 0-404-01784-3

Reprinted from the edition of 1885, London
First AS edition published in 1972

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.

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