Page "belles_lettres" Paragraph 899

Trevelyan was at least in part attracted to the period by an almost unconscious desire to take up the story where Macaulay's History Of England had broken off.

In addition, he believed in the `` dramatic unity and separateness of the period from 1702-14, lying between the Stuart and Hanoverian eras with a special ethos of its own ''.

He saw the age as one in which Britain `` settled her free constitution '' and attained her modern place in the world.

To most observers, there is little doubt that he placed an artificial strait jacket of unity upon the years of Anne's reign which in reality existed only in the pages of his history.