English people have an inherent power of reconciling opposites, which perhaps comes of their being a mixed race. The most revolutionary writers were held back by some thread of ancient custom, and those who clung to the older modes of thought were not without some broadening influence. “Nature” and “Truth” were still the accepted ideals of literature, although the meaning of both had changed; and _The Juvenile Spectator_,[109] which applied Addison’s method of character-drawing to the nursery, used it with a new understanding of childhood.