A Long Sentence and a Shorter One, Beautifully Juxtaposed

This particular last day of April falls in a year very nearly equidistant from 1689, the culmination of the English Revolution, and 1789, the start of the French; in a sort of dozing solstitial standstill, a stasis of the kind predicted by those today who see all evolution as a punctuated equilibrium, between those two zenith dates and all they stand for; at a time of reaction from the intemperate extremisms of the previous century, yet already hatching the seeds ... of the world-changing upheaval to come.  Certainly England as a whole was indulging in its favourite and sempiternal national hobby; retreating deep within itself, and united only in a constipated hatred of change of any kind.

--John Fowles, "A Maggot"