In all the departments of literature, the same lifelessness and uniformity were manifest. The deadest materialism prevailed both in science and philosophy, and the national soul seemed paralyzed beneath the weight of a dire, unknown, unseen incubus of death. In the meanwhile, however, there were influences at work both in England and Europe, which were silently preparing the way for a revolution in the thoughts and opinions of men. The spiritual element awoke in Germany and France, and like a mighty, but half-blind god, began to react upon the materialism of the age. Then, for the first time since the close of the Commonwealth, did the pulse of England begin, also, to beat with the music of life and health. The importations of German sentimentality--mawkish and imbecile as they often were--touched the right chords in the English heart, and roused it to consciousness. Men saw that there was new life struggling under this ghastly utterance, and began to lose their faith in the dead formalism, which they had so long hugged in their idolatry. Their minds were gradually turned to the old grandees of Elizabeth’s reign: to Shakspeare and rare Ben Jonson, and to Spenser, Beaumont and Fletcher, until, at last, the reactionary currents had fairly set in, which were to cleanse the national mind of its disease, and restore it to health. Add to this, that the higher minds of England were already immersed in those metaphysical speculations which, whilst they confirmed the increasing spiritual tendency, gave earnestness to their aim and character. And when, at last, after Rouseau and Voltaire--the two poles of the great revolutionary idea of Europe--had flung their works into the cauldron of this vast, seething, reactionary fermentation--the wonderous phenomenon, which we call the French Revolution, burst upon the world--the reaction was complete, and a new epoch dawned upon man--the epoch, viz., of progress and humanity--which will never close until its mission is sealed with the liberty and happiness of mankind.