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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 November 2009
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
charles dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, chapter 1William Cobbett, who was, it seems, born in the year of the Stamp Act (1765), and who certainly lived to see the Reform Bill of 1832, always said that he could not recall that country people (by which he must have meant most English people) ever knew or thought anything about politics in the ‘dark ages’ when he was a boy. ‘The shouts of victory or the murmur at a defeat would now-and-then break in upon our tranquillity for a moment; but I do not remember ever having seen a newspaper in the house…’
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