CHAPTER VIII. PERIOD OF
THE RESTORATION
(1660-1700)
THE AGE OF FRENCH INFLUENCE
HISTORY OF THE PERIOD.It seems a curious contradic-
tion, at first glance, to place the return of Charles II at the
beginning of modern England, as our historians are wont to
do; for there was never a time when the progress of liberty,
which history records, was more plainly turned backwards.
The Puritan régime had been too severe; it had repressed too
many natural pleasures. Now, released from restraint, so-
ciety abandoned the decencies of life and the reverence for
law itself, and plunged into excesses more unnatural than
had been the restraints of Puritanism. The inevitable effect
of excess is disease, and for almost an entire generation fol-
lowing the Restoration, in 1660, England lay sick of a fever.
Socially, politically, morally, London suggests an Italian city
in the days of the Medici; and its literature, especially its
drama, often seems more like the delirium of illness than the
expression of a healthy mind. But even a fever has its advan-
tages. Whatever impurity is in the blood "is burnt and purged
away," and a man rises from fever with a new strength and