STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685.

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some magical process, set before our eyes, we should not knowone landscape in a hundred or one building in ten thousand.

The country gentleman would not recognise his own fields.

The inhabitant of the town would not recognise his own street.Everything has been changed, but the great features of nature,and a few massive and durable works of human art. We mightfind out Snowdon and Windermere, the Cheddar Cliffs andBeachy Head. We might find out here and there a Normanminster, or a castle which witnessed the wars of the Roses.

But, with such rare exceptions, everything would be strange tous. Many thousands of square miles which are now rich cornland and meadow, intersected by green 1 hedge-rows, anddotted with villages and pleasant country seats, would appear asmoors overgrown with furze, or fens abandoned to wild ducks.

We should see straggling huts built of wood and covered withthatch, where we now see manufacturing towns and seaportsrenowned to the farthest ends of the world. The capital itselfwould shrink to dimensions not much exceeding those of itspresent suburb on the south of the Thames. Not less strangeto us would be the garb and manners of the people, the furni-ture and the equipages, the interior of the shops and dwell-ings. Such a change in the state of a nation seems to be atleast as well entitled to the notice of a historian as any changeof the dynasty or of the ministry.

One of the first objects of an inquirer, who wishes to form Popniya correct notion of the state of a community at a given time, Englandmust be to ascertain of how many persons that community lnthen consisted. Unfortunately the population of England in1685 cannot be ascertained with perfect accuracy. For nogreat state had then adopted the wise course of periodicallynumbering the people. All men were left to conjecture forthemselves; and, as they generally conjectured withoutexamining facts, and under the influence of strong passionsand prejudices, their guesses were often ludicrously absurd.