conventional orthodoxy in English life. From about the middle
of the century the balance gradually changes. In 1852 we find the
publisher Henry Bohn reissuing the worthless apologetic works of the
Rev. Andrew Fuller, with a "publisher's preface" in which they are
said to "maintain an acknowledged pre-eminence," though written "at a
period of our national history when the writings of Volney and Gibbon,
and especially of Thomas Paine, fostered by the political effects
of the French Revolution, had deteriorated the morals of the people,
and infused the poison of infidelity into the disaffected portion of
the public." We have here still the note of early-nineteenth-century
Anglican respectability, not easily to be matched in human history
for hollowness and blatancy. Fuller is at once one of the most
rabid and one of the most futile of the thousand and one defenders
of the faith. A sample of his mind and method is the verdict that
"If the light that is gone abroad on earth would permit the rearing
of temples to Venus, or Bacchus, or any of the rabble of heathen
deities, there is little doubt but that modern unbelievers would in
great numbers become their devotees; but, seeing they cannot have
a God whose worship shall accord with their inclinations, they seem
determined not to worship at all." [1695] In the very next year the
same publisher began the issue of a reprint of Gibbon, with variorum
notes, edited by "An English Churchman," who for the most part defended
Gibbon against his orthodox critics. This enterprise in turn brought
upon the pious publisher a fair share of odium. But the second half
of the century, albeit soon darkened by new wars in Europe, Asia, and
America, was to be for England one of Liberalism alike in politics and
in thought, free trade, and relatively free publication, with progress
in enlightenment for both the populace and the "educated" classes.