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years ago with the England of to-day. I shall not touch upon 
anything ecclesiastical or political, though much might be said 
under both of those heads. 
It seems to me almost as if I had been born into a different 
world from that in which we live now. ‘The nation had then 
recovered itself from the great strain of the long European war, 
in which England had (at one time almost alone against combined 
Europe) withstood the power of the first Napoleon. During that 
war, every other thought had been thrown into the background: 
taxation was at the highest possible point, and most people lived 
very simply and frugally. I have heard my father say that, as 
soon as the peace came, there was at once a very marked change, 
in the growth of comparative luxury in every rank and class of 
society. And soon the nation woke up to that great outburst of 
activity—social, scientific, intellectual, industrial—which has lasted 
to our own day. 
I have lately read over again two books which embody in the 
form of fiction accounts of the life and manners of the times to 
which they relate. One is Charles Reade’s novel, “The Cloister 
and the Hearth.” It gives many excellent sketches of life and 
manners on the continent of Europe, as they were about four 
hundred years ago—not entirely drawn from the writer’s imagin- 
ation, but founded largely upon a contemporary book, the 
Colloquies of Erasmus. The other is a work familiar (I hope) to 
you all, for there is no book better worthy of study, as giving a 
good idea of the England of fifty or sixty years ago. The 
“Pickwick Papers” were completed in 1837, and I well remember 
spelling out the green covered monthly numbers which my big 
brothers left about in my nursery (though of course I understood 
them very imperfectly), and the fascination which the pictures 
exercised upon my childish mind. And you know every Naturalist 
Society of the present day ought to look back with respect to the 
Pickwick Club, as being in some sense its forerunner! It was 
Mr. Pickwick’s essay on the Natural History of the Sticklebacks in 
Hampstead Ponds which had established his greatness. What a 
curious change it marks in the manner in which the two gener- 
