Page:The reign of George VI - 1763.djvu/27



the period in our history, of which these sheets contain an account is one of the most singular and remarkable, and more detached from the general arrangement of our annals than perhaps any other reign; yet it is necessary to sketch the outlines of the preceding times, that the reader may comprehend the whole picture at once in his imagination, without the pain of continued recollection.

The splendor of the English nation ought to take its date from the civil wars in the seventeenth century, which