Americans who desire to know the breadth and humanity of their own traditions should give some days and nights to the study of the eighteenth century, in which the minds of our colonial ancestors definitely turned from the problems of mediæval theology to the assimilation of classical culture and to the practise of a rational philosophy. The civilizing force of even the English eighteenth century has been greatly neglected by English-speaking students, in favor of the excitement and glamour offered by the Romantic Movement. But to the civilizing force of the American eighteenth century the present generation is for assignable reasons singularly inattentive.
Early in the nineteenth century reactionary village clergymen began the practice of referring in the pulpit to conspicuous "liberators" of the preceding age like Franklin, Jefferson, and Paine as "horrible examples," as men of brilliant intellect and patriotic motives, but of "infamous character"; and this clerical tradition is foolishly perpetuated
