The fate of romanticism in England was exactly the reverse of that which befell it in France. Whereas the French had imitated chiefly, and even exclusively, in the German romanticists, their divergence from reality, and their declaration of the sovereign rights of the passions, the English just as exclusively elaborated their Catholic and mystical elements. For them the Middle Ages had a powerful attraction, inasmuch as it was the period of childlike faith in the letter, and of the revelling of simple piety in personal intercourse with the Trinity, the Blessed Virgin, and all the guardian saints. Trade, industry, and civilization were nowhere in the world so much developed as in England. Nowhere did men work so assiduously, nowhere did they live under such artificial conditions as there. Hence the state of degeneration and exhaustion, which we observe to-day in all civilized countries as the result of this over-exertion, must of necessity have shown itself sooner in England than elsewhere, and, as a matter of fact, did show itself in the third and fourth decade of the century with continually increasing violence. In consequence, however, of the peculiarity of the English mind, the emotional factor in degeneration and exhaustion necessarily assumed with them a religious colouring. The Anglo-Saxon race is by nature healthy and strong-minded. It has therefore, in a high degree, that strong desire for knowledge which is peculiar to normally-constituted persons. In every age it has inquired into the why and how of phenomena, and shown passionate sympathy with, and gratitude to, everyone who held out hopes of an explanation of them. The well-known and deeply thoughtful discourse of the Anglican noble concerning what precedes and follows man’s life--a speech which Bede has preserved for us in his account of the conversion of Edwin to Christianity--has been cited by all authors (_e.g._, by G. Freytag and H. Taine[87]) who have studied the origins of the English mental constitution. It shows that as early as the beginning of the seventh century the Anglo-Saxons were consumed by an ardent desire to comprehend the phenomenon of the universe. This fine and high-minded craving for knowledge has proved at once the strength and the weakness of the English. It led with them to the development along parallel lines of the natural sciences and theology. The scientific investigators contributed a store of facts won through toilsome observation; the experts in divinity obtained theirs through systems compounded of notions arbitrarily conceived. Both claimed to explain the nature of things, and the people were deeply grateful to both, more so, it is true, to the theologians than to the scholars, because the former could afford to be more copious and confident in their teaching than the latter. The natural tendency to reckon words as equivalent to facts, assertions to demonstrations, always gives theologians and metaphysicians an immense advantage over observers.