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Research in the period of Grey and Bright led naturally to a more ambitious work.

Britain in the nineteenth century is a textbook designed `` to give the sense of continuous growth, to show how economic led to social, and social to political change, how the political events reacted on the economic and social, and how new thoughts and new ideals accompanied or directed the whole complicated process ''.

The plan is admirably fulfilled for the period up to 1832.

More temperately than in the study of Grey and despite his Liberal bias, Trevelyan vividly sketches the England of pre-French Revolution days, portrays the stresses and strains of the revolutionary period in rich colors, and brings developments leading to the Reform Bill into sharp and clear focus.

His technique is genuinely masterful.

By what one reader called a `` series of dissolving views '', he merges one period into another and gives a sense of continuous growth.