Page:The Victorian Age.djvu/17

 a general overturn in that country terrified men like Gibbon into prophesying that a similar outbreak was likely to overwhelm law, order and property in England. They did not realise how different the conditions were in the two countries. The most modest democratic reforms were therefore impossible till Napoleon was out of the way, and till the anti-revolutionary panic had subsided.

One result of the war has not always been realised. The eighteenth century had been international; there was no Chauvinism or Jingoism anywhere till the French, fighting ostensibly under the banner of humanity, had kindled the fire of patriotism in Spain, in Germany, and even in Russia. England had always had a strong national self-consciousness; and after the war the bonds of sympathy with France were not at once renewed, so that our country, during the early part of Victoria's reign, was more isolated from the main currents of European thought than ever before or since. Men of letters who lamented this isolation now turned for inspiration rather to Germany than