The History of England

Before his story begins, Macaulay walks the reader through England in 1685: roads that swallow a carriage to its axle, highwaymen working the heaths outside London, squires whose learning ends at their hounds, coffee houses just beginning to fill. That third chapter is the most audacious pause in English historical writing,and it works the way a great novel works, making a vanished country solid enough to walk into.