"The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," by Gibbon,

began to appear in 1776, a few months before the death of Hume, and was

not completed till 1788. It consisted of six ponderous quarto volumes,

and now often occupies double that number of octavos. It is a monument

of enormous labour and research, filling the long, waste, dark space

between ancient and modern history. It traces the history of Rome from

its Imperial splendour; through its severance into East and West;

through its decadence under its luxurious and effeminate emperors;

through the ravages of the invading hordes of the North, to the period

when the nations of Europe began, in the dawn of a new morning, to rise

from the depth of barbarism into life, form, and power. The faults

of this great work are, that it is written, like Hume's "History of

England," in the sceptical spirit of the period; and that it marches

on, in one high-sounding, pompous style, with a monotonous step, over

every kind of subject. The same space and attention are bestowed on the

insignificance of the feeblest emperors, and the least important times,

as on the greatest and most eventful. It is a work which all should

read, but a large part of it will be waded through rather as a duty

than a pleasure. Still, Gibbon holds his own indispensable position; no

other man has yet risen to occupy it better.

Besides these leading histories, this reign produced many others of

great value. Amongst these appeared, in 1763, a "History of England,"

by a lady, Catherine Macaulay, from James I. to the accession of

the House of Hanover; which was followed by another series, from

the Revolution to her own time. Mrs. Macaulay was a thorough-going

Republican; had gone to America expressly to see and converse with

Washington, and her history presented the very opposite opinions and

phase of events to those of Hume. Lord Lyttelton wrote a "History

of Henry II.," in by no means a popular style; and the book is

now forgotten. In 1776 there was published the first volume of

Lord Hailes's valuable "Annals of Scotland," of which Dr. Johnson

entertained so high an opinion. Besides these may be named Macpherson's

"History of Great Britain from the Restoration;" Stuart's "History

of the Reformation in Scotland," and "History of Scotland from the

Reformation to the Death of Queen Mary;" Whitaker's "History of

Manchester;" Warner's "History of Ireland;" Leland's "History of

Ireland;" Grainger's "Biographical History of England;" Ferguson's

"History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic;"

Watson's "History of Philip II. of Spain;" Orme's "History of the

British Nation in Hindostan;" Anderson's "Annals of Commerce." In

1784 Mitford published his "History of Ancient Greece," and two years

later Gillies published another "History of Greece." In 1789 Pinkerton

published a "History of the House of Stuart down to Queen Mary." In

1790 Boswell published his "Life of Johnson," the most interesting

biography ever written; in 1796 Roscoe his "Life of Lorenzo de'

Medici," and, in 1805, the "Life and Pontificate of Leo X."

The miscellaneous literature of this reign was immense, consisting of

travels, biographies, essays on all subjects, and treatises in every

department of science and letters. Prominent amongst these are the

"Letters of Junius," who, in the early part of the reign, kept the

leading statesmen, judges, and the king himself, in terror by the

relentlessness of his scarifying criticisms. These letters, which

are the perfection of political writing, have been ascribed to many

authors, but most generally to Sir Philip Francis; though it is hard

to speak on the subject with certainty. The writings of Dr. Johnson

furnish many items to this department. His "Dictionary of the English

Language" (1755) was a gigantic labour; his "Lives of the Poets,"

his "Tour to the Western Isles," would of themselves have made a

reputation, had he never written his poetry, his periodical essays,

or edited Shakespeare. Burke, too, besides his Speeches, added largely

to general literature. He wrote his "Inquiry into the Origin of the

Sublime and Beautiful;" assisted in the composition of the _Annual

Register_ for several years; and, in 1790, published his most famous

work, "Reflections on the French Revolution." Besides these he wrote

political letters and essays. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu produced her

celebrated Letters about the middle of the century, and many other

women were popular writers at this period: Sophia and Harriett Lee,

Anna Maria Williams, Mrs. Lennox, Mrs. Catherine Talbot, Elizabeth

Carter, the translator of Epictetus, Mrs. Montagu, an essayist on

Shakespeare, Mrs. Chapone, author of "Letters on the Improvement of

the Mind," Mrs. Barbauld, and Mrs. Charlotte Smith. In theology,

metaphysics, and mental philosophy, the earlier portion of the reign

was rich. In rapid succession appeared Reid's "Inquiry into the Human

Mind," Campbell's "Answer to Hume on Miracles," Beattie's "Essay on

Truth," Wallace's "Essay on the Numbers of Mankind," and Stuart's

"Enquiry into the Principles of Political Economy." But nine years

after Stuart's work appeared another on the same subject, which

raised that department of inquiry into one of the most prominent and

influential sciences of the age. This was the famous treatise "On the

Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations," by Adam Smith (1776),

which produced a real revolution in the doctrines of the production and

accumulation of wealth. In teaching the advantages of free trade and

the division of labour it has rendered incalculable services to mankind.

Besides those already mentioned as distinguished in various branches

of literature, there was a host of others whom we can only name. In

theology there were Warburton, South, Horsley, Jortin, Madan, Gerard,

Blair, Geddes, Lardner, Priestley; in criticism and philology, Harris,

Monboddo, Kames, Blair, Sir William Jones, Walpole; in antiquarian

research, Hawkins, Burney, Chandler, Barrington, Stevens, Pegge,

Farmer, Vallancey, Grose, Gough; in belles-lettres and general

literature, Chesterfield, Hawkesworth, Brown, Jenyns, Bryant, Hurd,

Melmoth, Potter, Francklin, etc.; in mathematical and physical science,

Black, the discoverer of latent heat, Cavendish, the discoverer of

the composition of water, Priestley, Herschel, Maskelyne, Horsley,

Vince, Maseres, James Hutton, author of "The Huttonian Theory of the

Earth," Charles Hutton, Cullen Brown, the founder of the Brownian

theory of medicine, John and William Hunter, the anatomists, Pennant,

the zoologist, etc.; discoverers of new lands, plants, and animals,

Commodore Byron, Captains Wallis, Cook, Carteret, Flinders, etc., Dr.

Solander, Sir Joseph Banks, Mr. Green.

Amongst these, or in the period immediately succeeding them, some

individuals demand a particular notice. Benjamin Franklin, though

an American citizen, ought perhaps to be mentioned, as so immensely

influencing science by his discoveries in electricity; and Sir William

Jones, for his great additions to our knowledge of Indian and Persian

literature and theology. There was a large number of translations made

by Pye, Twining, Gillies, Francis, Murphy, Parr, Tyrwhitt, Wakefield,

etc. By one or other of these the works of Aristotle, Tacitus, Horace,

Cæsar, Virgil, Lucretius, etc., were wholly or partly introduced to

us. Monboddo's "Origin and Progress of Language," and Horne Tooke's

"Diversions of Purley" made a great sensation; Paine's "Rights of Man"

and "Age of Reason" a still greater, and called out elaborate answers.

Richard Porson was equally distinguished for his classical knowledge

and his drunkenness. Mary Wollstonecraft published her "Rights of

Woman," as a necessary addendum to Paine's "Rights of Man." There were

also editions of Shakespeare issued by Dr. Johnson, Steevens, Capell,

Hanmer, Malone, and Reed. Warton, Ritson, Pinkerton, Macpherson, and

Ellis revived our older poetry by new editions. The controversy on the

poetry of Ossian ran high during this period. In theology and morals,

the works of Dr. Paley and Bishops Watson, Horsley, and Porteus, were

most prominent. In speculative philosophy, Malthus, by his "Essay on

the Principle of Population," carried to greater lengths the notions of

Wallace on the numbers of mankind.

In the later period of the reign some of our chief poets appeared also

as prose writers in biography, criticism, and general literature:

Southey, as biographer and critic; Campbell and Moore, Leigh Hunt

and Charles Lamb, in the same field; so also Hazlitt, Sydney Smith,

Jeffrey, Playfair, Stewart, Brown, Mackintosh, and Bentham--the last in

the philosophy of law. In physical science, Sir Humphry Davy, Leslie,

Dalton, the author of the atomic theory, and Wollaston, distinguished

themselves.

Periodical writing grew in this reign into a leading organ of opinion

and intelligence. The two chief periodicals, according to our present

idea of them, were the _Gentleman's Magazine_ and the _Monthly Review_.

These were both started prior to the accession of George III. The

_Gentleman's Magazine_ was started by Cave, the publisher, in 1731; and

the _Monthly Review_ commenced in 1749. The former was a depository of

a great variety of matters, antiquarian, topographical, critical, and

miscellaneous, and has retained that character to the present hour. The

_Monthly Review_ was exclusively devoted to criticism. But in the early

portion of the reign a periodical literature of a totally different

character prevailed--the periodical essayist--formed on the model of

the _Spectator_, _Guardian_, and _Tatler_ of a prior period. Chief

amongst these figured Ambrose Philips's _Freethinker_; the _Museum_,

supported by Walpole, the Wartons, Akenside, etc.; the _Rambler_, by

Dr. Johnson; the _Adventurer_, by Hawkesworth; the _World_, in which

wrote chiefly aristocrats, as Lords Lyttelton, Chesterfield, Bath,

Cork, Horace Walpole, etc.; the _Connoisseur_, chiefly supplied by

George Colman and Bonnel Thornton; the _Old Maid_, conducted by Mrs.

Frances Brooke; the _Idler_, by Johnson; the _Babbler_, by Hugh Kelly;

the _Citizen of the World_, by Goldsmith; the _Mirror_, chiefly written

by Mackenzie, the author of the "Man of Feeling;" and the _Lounger_,

also chiefly conducted by Mackenzie. This class of productions,

appearing each once or twice a week, afforded the public the amusement

and instruction now furnished by the daily newspapers, weekly reviews,

and monthly magazines. Towards the end of the reign arose a new species

of review, the object of which was, under the guise of literature,

to serve opposing parties in politics. The first of these was the

_Edinburgh Review_, the organ of the Whigs, started in 1802, in which

Brougham, Jeffrey, and Sydney Smith were the chief writers. This,

professing to be liberal, launched forth the most illiberal criticisms

imaginable. There was scarcely a great poet of the time--Wordsworth,

Coleridge, Southey, Byron, James Montgomery, Leigh Hunt, Shelley,

Keats--whom it did not, but vainly, endeavour to crush. To combat

the influence of this Whig organ, in 1809 came forth the _Quarterly

Review_, the great organ of the Tories, to which Scott, Southey, Wilson

Croker, Gifford, etc., were the chief contributors. In 1817 this was

followed by another Conservative journal, not quarterly, but monthly in

its issue, conducted chiefly by Professor Wilson and Lockhart, namely,

_Blackwood's Magazine_, in which the monthly magazines of to-day find

their prototype, but with a more decided political bias than these

generally possess.

In the department of the Drama the fertility was immense. Tragedy,

comedy, and farce maintained a swelling stream during the whole reign.

In the earlier portion of it the chief writers of this class were

Goldsmith, Garrick, Foote, Macklin, Murphy, Cumberland, Colman the

elder, Mrs. Cowley, and Sheridan. Several of these dramatists--as

Garrick, Macklin, and Foote--were, at the same time, actors. The most

eminent of them as writers were Goldsmith, Sheridan, and Colman. Horace

Walpole wrote the "Mysterious Mother," a tragedy, which, however,

was never acted; Goldsmith his two comedies, "The Good-Natured Man"

and "She Stoops to Conquer," which were extremely popular; Garrick,

the farces of "The Lying Valet" and "Miss in her Teens." He was said

also to have been a partner with Colman in writing "The Clandestine

Marriage;" but Colman denied this, saying that Garrick wrote the first

two acts, and brought them to him, desiring him to put them together,

and that he did put them together, for he put them together into

the fire, and re-wrote the whole. Another farce, "High Life below

Stairs," attributed to Garrick, was, it seems, written by the Rev.

James Townley, assisted by Dr. Hoadly, the author of "The Suspicious

Husband." Garrick was the great actor of his time, but, as a dramatic

writer, his merit is insignificant. Foote was the chief writer of the

comic before Colman. His productions amount to upwards of twenty, the

most of them farces; and amongst them are "The Minor," "The Liar," and

"The Mayor of Garrat." Foote was the wit and punster of the age. His

satiric keenness was the terror of his time, and he dared to think of

trying it even on the great essayist, Dr. Johnson, by introducing him

upon the stage; but Johnson sent him word that he would be in one of

the stage-boxes with a good, knotty cudgel, and Foote thought it best

to let him alone.

Macklin was the author of "The Man of the World," a most successful

comedy, as well as others of much merit. He remained on the stage till

he was a hundred years old, and lived to a hundred and seven. George

Colman had distinguished himself by the translation of Terence's plays

and Horace's "Art of Poetry" before he commenced as a dramatist. His

vein was comic, and his comedies and farces amount to nearly thirty,

the best being "The Clandestine Marriage," already mentioned, "Polly

Honeycomb," and "The Jealous Wife." Arthur Murphy was a native of

Cork, and was brought up a merchant, but his bent was to the drama,

and he quitted his business and went to London, where he wrote two

successful farces, "The Apprentice" and "The Upholsterer." He next

wrote "The Orphan of China," a tragedy. He then studied for the bar,

but had not much practice, and returned to writing for the stage.

"The Grecian Daughter," "All in the Wrong," "The Way to keep Him,"

and "The Citizen," were very successful, and raised him to wealth and

distinction. Not satisfied with being a popular writer, he desired to

act as well as write, like Garrick and Macklin, but failed. Besides

his dramatic productions, he translated Tacitus and Sallust, and

wrote the life of Garrick. Richard Cumberland, also an Irishman,

was a very voluminous as well as miscellaneous writer. His comedy

of "The West Indian" made him at once popular, and he wrote a great

number of productions for the stage, amongst the best of which were

"The Fashionable Lover," "The Jew," "The Wheel of Fortune," etc. He

was employed by Government as an envoy to Lisbon and Madrid, and by

it refused the payment of his expenses. This reduced him to sell his

hereditary property, but he retired to Tunbridge Wells, and continued

to write plays, novels, essays, criticisms, etc., till nearly eighty

years of age.

There was a number of lady dramatists of this period. Mrs. Cowley

wrote "The Runaway," "The Belle's Stratagem," "More Ways than One,"

etc.; Mrs. Brooke, Miss Marshall, Mrs. Lennox, and Miss Sophia Lee,

all wrote successful plays; Mrs. Sheridan, the author of the Eastern

story, "Nourjahad," was the writer of the successful comedies of "The

Discovery" and "The Dupe." But the chief dramatist of this period was

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, her son (_b._ 1751; _d._ 1816). He was

equally distinguished as a politician, an orator, and a critic. Like

Murphy, Macklin, and Cumberland, he was an Irishman. His dramas placed

him at the head of all the writers for the stage of his time. They

abounded with humour, wit, the smartest action, and knowledge of life

and human nature. His splendid comedy of "The Rivals," written when

he was not twenty-five, did not at first augur much success; but "The

Duenna," which appeared the same year, carried with it at once the

highest public favour; and his "School for Scandal," acted in 1777,

raised his reputation to the utmost. He also wrote the farces of "The

Critic," "The Trip to Scarborough," and "St. Patrick's Day." All these

were issued before 1780, and after that he was too much involved in

political affairs to renew this style of writing. Amongst his other

labours for the theatre was the adaptation of "Pizarro," one of

Kotzebue's numerous plays. Sheridan first appeared before the world as

the translator of "Aristænetus."

[Illustration: DAVID GARRICK AS RICHARD III. (_After Hogarth._)]

Comedy and farce occupied the middle portion of the reign, but

neither of them rose to the height of Sheridan. In tragedy, Murphy's

"Arminius," Godwin's "Antonio," and Madame D'Arblay's "Edwy and

Elgiva," were the best. Amongst the comedies, Holcroft's "Road to

Ruin," Morton's "Speed the Plough," Mrs. Inchbald's "Wives as they

Were, and Maids as they Are," and Colman's "Sylvester Daggerwood," were

the most popular.

In the latest period scarcely any acting dramas were produced.

Amongst the unacted tragedies, or such as were acted with no great

success--being better fitted for private study--were Coleridge's

"Remorse" and "Zapolya;" Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound" and "The

Cenci;" Byron's "Cain," "Manfred," "Sardanapalus," etc.; Maturin's

"Bertram," "Manuel," and "Fredolpho;" Joanna Baillie's "Plays on the

Passions," "The Family Legend"--the last acted with some success at

Edinburgh, through the influence of Sir Walter Scott, in 1810--Charles

Lamb's "John Woodvill," Milman's "Fazio," and Walter Savage Landor's

"Count Julian," "Andrea of Hungary," "Giovanni of Naples," "Fra

Rupert," "The Siege of Ancona," etc., all masterly dramas, constituting

a blaze of dramatic genius which, had it been adapted to the stage,

would have given it a new grandeur at the close of this reign.

The new spring in poetry broke forth as brilliantly in this reign as

that in prose. In the earlier portion of it, indeed, this was not so

visible. The school of Pope seemed still to retain its influence. This

school had produced a host of imitators, but little real genius since

Pope's time. Almost the only exception to this mediocrity was Collins,

whose odes were full of fire and genius. He died just before this

period, and Gray, Shenstone, and Goldsmith opened it with many of the

exterior characteristics of that school. But, in truth, notwithstanding

the mere fashion of their compositions, there were in them unmistakable

evidences of new life. Shenstone was the least vigorous and original

of the three, but his "Schoolmistress" possessed a natural charm that

still gains it admirers. He belongs, however, rather to the past

period than this, for he died but three years after the accession of

George III., and had ceased to write some time before. Gray's "Elegy

in a Country Churchyard" showed that he had deep feeling and a nice

observation of nature; and his "Long Story" that he possessed real

humour--a quality abounding in his prose, but, except in this piece,

little visible in his poetry. His odes are extremely vigorous, but

somewhat formal. His "Bard," his "Ode on Eton College," and his "Fatal

Sisters," are all full of beauty, but somewhat stilted. In the "Fatal

Sisters" he introduced a subject from the "Scandinavian Edda" to the

English reader, but in a most un-Scandinavian dress.

Goldsmith was in his poetry, as in his prose, simple, genuine, and

natural. His "Deserted Village" and "Traveller" were in the metre of

Pope, but they were full of the most exquisite touches of pathos,

of truth, and liberty; they were new in spirit, though old in form.

Charles Churchill, the satirist, was full of flagellant power. He has

been said to have formed himself on Dryden; but it is more probable

that his models were Lucian and Juvenal. He was a bold and merciless

chastiser of the follies of the times. He commenced, in the "Rosciad,"

with the players, by which he stirred a nest of hornets. Undauntedly he

pursued his course, attacking, in "The Ghost," the then all-powerful

Dr. Johnson, who ruled like a despot over both literary men and their

opinions. These satires, strong and somewhat coarse, were followed by

"The Prophecy of Famine," an "Epistle to Hogarth," "The Conference,"

"The Duellist," "The Author," "Gotham," "The Candidate," "The Times,"

etc. In these Churchill not only lashed the corruptions of the age,

but the false principles of nations. He condemned the seizure of other

countries by so-called Christian powers, on the plea of discovery.

It was only to be lamented that Churchill, who was a clergyman, in

censuring his neighbour's vices did not abandon his own.

Amongst other authors of the time, then very popular, but now

little read, were Armstrong, author of "The Art of Preserving

Health;" Akenside, of "The Pleasures of Imagination;" Wilkie, of

"The Epigoniad;" and Glover, of the epic of "Leonidas." Falconer's

"Shipwreck" and Beattie's "Minstrel" are poems much more animate

with the vitality of grace and feeling. Then there were Anstey, with

his "Bath Guide," half descriptive and half satiric; Stephenson's

"Crazy Tales;" Mason's "Isis," a satire on the University of Oxford,

and his tragedies of "Elfrida" and "Caractacus," which, with other

poems by the same author, enjoyed a popularity that waned before more

truly living things. Then there were the brothers Joseph and Thomas

Warton. Both of these deserve to be mentioned amongst our first-rate

prose writers--Joseph for his excellent "Essay on the Genius and

Writings of Pope," and Thomas for his "History of English Poetry,"

and this is merely a fragment, coming down only to the reign of Queen

Elizabeth. But that which, at this period, produced a thorough reform

of our poetry was the publication of "The Reliques of Ancient English

Poetry," by Bishop Percy. These specimens of poetry went back beyond

the introduction of the French model into England--to the times when

Chaucer, and still earlier poets, wrote from the instincts of nature,

and not from scholastical or fashionable patterns. In particular, the

old ballads, such as "Chevy Chace," "The Babes in the Wood," and the

like, brought back the public taste from the artificial to the natural.

The simple voice of truth, pathos, and honest sentiment was at once

felt by every heart, and the reign of mere ornate words was over.

After the Reliques came "The Border Minstrelsy" of Scott and completed

the revolution. These ancient ballads, in both Percy and Scott, were

found, in many instances, to be founded on precisely the same facts as

those of the Swedes and Danes, collected seventy years before, thus

showing that they were originally brought into Great Britain by the

Scandinavians--a proof of their high antiquity. A similar return to

nature was going on in Germany and the North of Europe, showing that

the very collection of Percy's "Reliques" originated in some general

cause, and that cause, no doubt, was the universal weariness of the

artificial style which had so long prevailed in literature.

About this time two publications occurred, which produced long and

violent controversies--those of the pretended "Poems of Rowley," by

Chatterton, and "Ossian's Poems," by Macpherson. Chatterton, who was

the articled clerk of an attorney at Bristol, a mere youth, pretended

that he had discovered Rowley's poems in the muniment room of the

Church of St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol. These poems, written on yellow

parchment, and in a most antiquated style, by a boy of sixteen, were

palmed upon the world as the genuine productions of one Thomas Rowley,

and took in many well-known authors and literary antiquaries, very

wise in their own conceit. As the productions of a boy of that age

these poems are marvellous, and nothing besides which Chatterton, in

his short, neglected life, produced approached them in merit. This,

too, was the case with Macpherson, who professed to have collected the

poems of Ossian, an old bard of Morven, in the Highlands, and simply

translated them into English. He was warmly accused of having written

them himself; but as Chatterton, so Macpherson, steadily denied the

authorship of the poems thus introduced, and as in Chatterton's case,

so in Macpherson's, no other compositions of the professed collector

ever bore any relation to these in merit. There can now be very little

doubt that Macpherson founded his Ossianic poems on real originals to

some extent; but that Chatterton, if he received Rowley's poems from

Rowley, did so by inspiration.

For some time after the revival of true poetry the old forms still hung

about what in spirit was new. The last of the old school of any note

may be said to have been Dr. Johnson and Dr. Darwin. Johnson was too

thoroughly drilled into the dry, didactic fashion of the artificial

past, he was too bigotedly self-willed to be capable of participating

in the renovation. In fact, he never was more than a good versifier,

one of that class who can win prizes for University themes on the

true line and square system of metrical composition. His "London," a

mere paraphrase of the third book of "Juvenal," and "The Vanity of

Human Wishes" are precisely of that stamp. Johnson lived at the time

of Chatterton's appearance, but he completely ignored him, and he

ridiculed the simplicity of the poems introduced by Bishop Percy by

absurd parodies on them, as--

I put my hat upon my head,

And walked into the Strand;

And there I met another man,

With his hat in his hand.

And,

If the man who turnips cries,

Cries not when his father dies,

'Tis a sign that he had rather

Have a turnip than his father.

As for the poems of Ossian, he made a violent attack upon them in his

"Tour to the Western Isles."

Dr. Erasmus Darwin assumed the hopeless task of chaining poetry to the

car of science. He was a physician of Derby, and, like Sir Richard

Blackmore, "rhymed to the rumbling of his own coach wheels;" for we are

told that he wrote his verses as he drove about to his patients. His

great poem is the "Botanic Garden," in which he celebrates the loves

of the plants, and his "Economy of Vegetation," in which he introduces

all sorts of mechanical inventions. Amongst the rest he announces the

triumphs of steam in sonorous rhymes--

Soon shall thy arm, unconquered Steam! afar

Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car.

And he celebrates the compass in equally imposing heroics--

Hail, adamantine steel! magnetic lord!

King of the prow, the ploughshare, and the sword!

True to the pole, by thee the pilot guides

His steady helm amid the struggling tides;

Braves, with broad sail, the immeasurable sea;

Cleaves the dark air, and asks no star but thee!

This style of verse was thought very magnificent by Anna Seward, of

Lichfield, who was intimate with Darwin when he lived there in his

earlier career, and who herself was a poetess of some pretension. Miss

Seward, however, showed better judgment in being amongst the first to

point out the rising fame of Southey and Scott. The verse of Darwin

brought Pope's metre to the highest pitch of magniloquence; and the use

of the cæsura gives it a perfectly Darwinian peculiarity.

The poets who most retained the robes of the past, without disguising

the divine form within, were the Rev. George Crabbe and Cowper. The

poetry of Crabbe, all written in the metre of Pope, is, nevertheless,

instinct with the very soul of nature. It chooses the simplest, and

often the least apparently lofty or agreeable topics, but it diffuses

through these, and at the same time draws from them, a spirit and life

that are essentially poetry. Nothing at the time that it appeared

could look less like poetry. The description of a library, the dirty

alleys, the pothouses, the sailors, and monotonous sea-shores in and

about a maritime borough, struck the readers of the assumed sublime

with astonishment and dismay. "Can this be poetry?" they asked. But

those who had poetry in themselves--those in whom the heart of nature

was strong, replied, "Yes, the truest poetry." Nature smiles as the

rude torch flickers past, and shows its varied forms in its truest

shape. In his "Tales of the Hall" Crabbe entered on scenes which are

commonly deemed more elevated; he came forward into the rural village,

the rectory, and the manor-house; but everywhere he carried the same

clear, faithful, analytical spirit, and read the most solemn lessons

from the histories and the souls of men. Crabbe has been styled the

Rembrandt of English poetic painting; but he is not merely a painter of

the outward, he is the prober of the inward at the same time, who, with

a hand that never trembles, depicts sternly the base nature, and drops

soothing balm on the broken heart.

William Cowper (_b._ 1731; _d._ 1800) combined in his verse the

polish of Pope with the freedom and force of Churchill. He possessed

the satirical strength of Churchill with a more gentle and Christian

spirit. In Cowper broke forth the strongest, clearest sense that

had distinguished any writer in prose or verse for generations. He

painted nature like a lover, but with the truth of a great artist,

and he flagellated the vices of society in the very highest quarters

with unshrinking boldness; at the same time, with equal intrepidity,

he advanced the assertions of a perfect faith in the religion of the

Gospel, in the face of the hardest scepticism of the age.

It is a curious fact, that whilst Cowper was haunted by the most

agonising terrors of a nervous temperament, even to despair, his

poetry breathes the most consolatory tone. Whilst his mind was often

wandering in insanity, there is no composition so sane and so sound in

intellectual substance as his. Though seldom indulging in high flights

of imagination, yet his verse frequently rises into a richness and

nobility of voice nearly equal to the prophetic. The "Lines on his

Mother's Picture" exhibit the deep feeling of Cowper, and the ballad of

"John Gilpin" the genuine mirth which often bubbled up in a heart so

racked and tried with melancholy.

Contemporary with Cowper was Mrs. Tighe, the author of "Psyche," an

allegorical poem, in which the beauty of the sentiment made acceptable

that almost exploded form of composition. But there was at this period

a number of writers who had much more false than true sentiment.

The euphuism of the reign of Queen Elizabeth broke forth in another

fashion. A kind of poetical club was formed at Batheaston, the

residence of Lady Miller, near Bath. She and her guests, amongst whom

was Miss Seward, wrote verses, which they published under the title of

"Poetical Amusements." A still more flaunting school set themselves

up amongst the English at Florence, one of whom, a Mr. Robert Merry,

dubbed himself "Della Crusca," whence the clique became known as the

"Della Cruscan School." Amongst the members of it figured Mrs. Piozzi,

the widow of Thrale the brewer, Boswell, Johnson's biographer, Mary

Robinson, the younger Colman, and Holcroft, the dramatist, with others

of less name. They addressed verses to each other in the most florid

and extravagant style under the names of "Rosa Matilda," "Laura Maria,"

"Orlando," and the like. The fashion was infectious; and not only were

the periodicals flooded by such silly mutual flatteries, but volumes

were published full of them. Gifford, the editor of the _Quarterly

Review_, and translator of Juvenal, attacked this frenzy in a satire

called the "Baviad," and continued the attack in the "Mæviad," which,

however, was more particularly a censure on the degraded condition

of the drama. This put an end to the nuisance, and Gifford won great

fame by it; though, on referring to his two celebrated satires, we are

surprised at their dulness, and are led to imagine that it was their

heaviness which crushed these moths of literature. Gifford had himself

a great fame in his day, which was chiefly based on his formidable

position as editor of the _Quarterly Review_.

But whilst Gifford was thus demolishing an outbreak of bad taste, a

much more remarkable evidence that those who lay claim to good taste

frequently have it not was given by the appearance of several new plays

and other documents attributed to Shakespeare. The chief of these was

"Kynge Varrtygerne," a tragedy, edited by Samuel Ireland. Numbers

of persons of high name and pretension, as Dr. Parr, Boswell, Pye,

the laureate, Chalmers, the editor of an issue of "British Poets,"

Pinkerton, a writer of all sorts of things, etc., became enthusiastic

believers and admirers of these pretended discoveries. They turned out

to be impudent forgeries by the son of the editor, named William Henry

Ireland, and are in reality such trash that they are a melancholy proof

of how little value, from some learned persons, is the adoration of

Shakespeare. Malone, in an "Inquiry" into the authenticity of these

writings, in 1796, completely exposed their spuriousness. Pinkerton,

one of their most zealous advocates, himself perpetrated a similar

forgery of a volume of Scottish poems, issued as ancient ones. He

enjoyed the particular patronage of Horace Walpole.

[Illustration: EXTERIOR OF THE COTTAGE AT ALLOWAY IN WHICH BURNS WAS

BORN.]

A number of satires and other poems appeared at this time which

deserve only a mere mention. These are "The Pursuits of Literature,"

by Thomas James Mathias; "Anticipation," by Richard Tickell, being an

anticipation of the king's Speech, and the debates of Parliament; "An

Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers," by Mason, under the assumed

name of Malcolm Macgregor; "The Rolliad," also a political satire,

in 1785. To this succeeded "Probationary Odes," from the same party.

These were eclipsed by the publications of Dr. John Wolcot, under the

name of Peter Pindar, who for twenty years kept the public laughing

by his witty and reckless effusions, in which the king especially

was most unmercifully ridiculed. Wolcot had the merit of discovering

Opie, the painter, as a sawyer in the neighbourhood of Truro, and

pushing him forward by his praises. Of the Royal Academicians he was

a relentless enemy, and to them addressed several odes, of the most

caustic and damaging kind. Later on came the inimitable poems of the

"Anti-Jacobin," written by Canning, Hookham Frere, and others, among

which it is sufficient to recall the "Needy Knife-grinder," and the

satires on the Addington Administration. But now there came a voice

from Scotland that filled with envy the crowd of second-rate poets

of London, and marked the dawn of a new era. A simple but sturdy

peasant--with no education but such as is extended to every child

in every rural parish of Scotland; "following the plough along the

mountain side," laboriously sowing and reaping and foddering neat;

instead of haunting drawing-rooms in bob-tailed coat and kid gloves,

dancing on the barn-floor, or hob-nobbing with his rustic chums at the

next pot-house--set up a song of youth, of passion, of liberty and

equality, so clear, so sonorous, so ringing with the clarion tones

of genius and truth, that all Britain, north and south, stood still

in wonder, and the most brazen vendor of empty words and impudent

pretensions to intellectual power owned the voice of the master, and

was for a moment still. This master of song was Robert Burns (_b._

1759; _d._ 1796). Need we say more? Need we speak of the exquisite

beauty of the "Cotter's Saturday Night"?--of the fun of "Tam o'

Shanter"?--of the satiric drollery of his laughter at antiquarian and

other pretenders?--of the scathing sarcasms on sectarian cant in "Holy

Willie's Prayer," and a dozen other things?--of the spirit of love and

the spirit of liberty welling up in his heart in a hundred living

songs?--of the law of man's independence and dignity stamped on the

page of eternal memory in the few words--"A man's a man for a' that"?

Are not these things written in the book of human consciousness, all

the world over? Do not his fellow-countrymen sing them and shout them

in every climate under heaven? At the time when they appeared the poems

of Robert Burns clearly showed that true poetry was not altogether

extinct, and effectually put an end to that fatal rage of imitation of

the artificial school of Johnson and Pope which then prevailed.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF BURNS'S COTTAGE AT ALLOWAY.

(_From a Photograph by G. W. Wilson & Co._)]

Then came the Lake school, so called because the poets lived more

or less amongst the lakes of Westmoreland and Cumberland; but

which would have been more correctly called the natural school, in

contradistinction to the artificial school which they superseded. The

chief of these were Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey. Wordsworth

and Coleridge had travelled in Germany, when few Englishmen travelled

there, and all of them had more or less imbibed that spirit of

intense love of natural beauty and of mental philosophy which

prevails in Germany. In Southey this evaporated in ballads of the

wild and wonderful, with a strong tinge of Teutonic _diablerie_. In

Wordsworth and Coleridge these elements sank deeper, and brought forth

more lasting fruits. But there was another cause which went greatly

to the formation of Wordsworth's poetic system. He was thoroughly

indoctrinated by his early friends, Charles Lloyd and Thomas Wilkinson,

members of the Society of Friends, with their theory of worship and

psychology. They taught him that the spirit of God breathes through

all nature, and that we have only to listen and receive. This system

was enunciated in some of his lyrical poems, but it is the entire

foundation of his great work, the "Excursion." In his earliest poems

William Wordsworth (_b._ 1770; _d._ 1850) wrote according to the manner

of the time, and there is nothing remarkable in them; but in his

"Lyrical Ballads," the first of which appeared in 1798, there was an

entire change. They were of the utmost simplicity of language, and some

of them on subjects so homely that they excited the most unmeasured

ridicule of the critics. In particular, the _Edinburgh Review_

distinguished itself by its excessive contempt of them. The same fate

awaited his successive publications, including his great work, the

"Excursion;" and the tide of scorn was only turned by a series of

laudatory criticisms by Professor Wilson, in _Blackwood's Magazine_,

after which the same critics became very eulogistic.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF BURNS'S COTTAGE AT ALLOWAY.

(_From a photograph by G. W. Wilson & Co._)]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (_b._ 1772; _d._ 1834) published his earliest

poems in association with his friends, Wordsworth, Charles Lloyd,

and Charles Lamb. But his contributions, especially of the "Ancient

Mariner," soon pointed them out as belonging to a genius very

different. In his compositions there is a wide variety, some of them

being striking from their wild and mysterious nature, some for their

elevation of both spirit and language, and others for their deep

tone of feeling. His "Geneviève," his "Christabel," his "Ancient

Mariner," and his "Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni," are themselves the

sufficient testimonies of a great master. In some of his blank verse

compositions the tone is as independently bold as the sentiments are

philosophical and humane. Besides his own poetry, Coleridge translated

part of Schiller's "Wallenstein," and was the author of several prose

works of a high philosophical character. Southey was as different

from Coleridge in the nature of his poetical productions as Coleridge

was from Wordsworth. In his earliest poems he displayed a strong

resentment against the abuses of society; he condemned war in his poem

on "Blenheim," and expressed himself unsparingly on the treatment of

the poor. His "Botany Bay Eclogues" are particularly in this vein. But

he changed all that, and became one of the most zealous defenders of

things as they are. His smaller poems are, after all, the best things

which he wrote; his great epics of "Madoc," "Roderick, the Last of the

Goths," "The Curse of Kehama," and "Thalaba," now finding few readers.

Yet there are parts of them that must always charm.

Since the appearance of the Waverley Novels the poetry of Scott has

been somewhat depreciated, but his metrical romances, if not of the

highest class of poetry, are always fresh, from their buoyancy and

the scenery in which they are laid. They are redolent of the mountain

heather and summer dews; and the description of the sending of the

"fiery cross" over the hills, and the battle in "Marmion," as well as

other portions, are instinct with genuine poetic vigour. Campbell, who

won an early reputation by his "Pleasures of Hope," is more esteemed

now for his heroic ballads "Hohenlinden," "The Battle of the Baltic,"

and his "Mariners of England;" Moore, for his "Irish Melodies," than

for his "Lalla Rookh;" Byron, for his "Childe Harold," rather than

for his earlier love tales of the East, or his later dramatic poems.

Amongst the very highest of the poets of that period stands Percy

Bysshe Shelley (_b._ 1792; _d._ 1822), the real poet of spiritual

music, of social reformation, and of the independence of man. Never did

a soul inspired by a more ardent love of his fellow-creatures receive

such a bitter portion of unkindness and repudiation. John Keats, of a

still more delicate and shrinking temperament, also received, in return

for strains of the purest harmony, a sharp judgment, in no degree,

however, equal to the severity of that dealt out to Shelley. In his

"Ode to a Grecian Urn," and his "Lamia," Keats left us examples of

beauty of conception and felicity of expression not surpassed since

the days of Shakespeare. In his "Hyperion" he gave equal proof of the

strength and grandeur to which he would have attained.

The distinguished poets still thronging the close of this period

would require voluminous space to particularise their works: the

vigorous and classic Savage Landor; the graceful, genial Leigh Hunt;

Charles Lamb, quaint and piquant; Rogers, lover equally of art and

nature; John Wilson, tender, but somewhat diffuse; Hogg, the Ettrick

Shepherd, linked in perpetual memory with his "Kilmeny" and the "Bird

of the Wilderness;" Allan Cunningham; MacNeill; Grahame, author of

"The Sabbath;" James Montgomery, amongst the very few successful poets

of religion; Tennant, author of "Anster Fair;" Kirke White, Sotheby,

Maturin, Procter (Barry Cornwall), Milman, Joanna Baillie, Miss

Mitford, Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Howitt, Richard Howitt, Elliott the Corn-Law

Rhymer, whose most beautiful poems had been for twenty years steadily

ignored by the whole English press, till they were accidentally

discovered by Sir John Bowring.

In all those arts which increase the prosperity of a nation England

made the most remarkable progress during this reign. A number of men,

springing chiefly from its working or manufacturing orders, arose, who

introduced inventions and improvements in practical science, which

added, in a most wonderful degree, to the industrial resources of the

country. Agriculture at the commencement of the reign was in a sluggish

and slovenly condition, but the increase of population, and the

augmented price of corn and cattle, led to numerous enclosures of waste

lands, and to improvements both in agricultural implements and in the

breeds of sheep and cattle. During the thirty-three years of the reign

of George II. the number of enclosures averaged only seven per annum,

but in the first twenty-five years of the reign of George III. they

amounted to forty-seven per annum. During that period the number of

enclosures was one thousand one hundred and eighty-six, the number each

year rapidly increasing. The value of the produce also stimulated the

spirit of improvement in tillage as well as enclosure. Many gentlemen,

especially in Northumberland, Kent, Norfolk, and Suffolk, devoted

themselves to agricultural science. They introduced rotation of crops

instead of fallows, and better manuring, and also cultivated various

vegetables on a large scale in the fields which before had generally

been confined to the garden, as turnips, carrots, potatoes, cabbage,

parsnips, etc. Their example began to be followed by the ordinary class

of farmers, and the raising of rents greatly quickened this imitation.

At the opening of the reign the rental of land did not exceed ten

shillings per acre on an average; the rental of the whole kingdom in

1769 being sixteen million pounds, according to Arthur Young, but in

a few years it was nearly doubled. This gentleman, who has left us so

much knowledge of the agricultural state of the kingdom in his "Tours

of Survey," tells us that, northward especially, the old lumbering

ploughs and other clumsy instruments were still in use, instead of the

improved ones, and that there was, therefore, a great waste of labour,

both of man and beast, in consequence. But still improvement was slowly

spreading, and already Bakewell was engaged in those experiments which

introduced, instead of the old large-headed and ill-shaped sheep,

a breed of superior symmetry, which at once consumed less food and

yielded a heavier carcase. It was at first contemptuously said by the

old race of farmers and graziers, that Bakewell's new herd of sheep was

too dear for any one to purchase and too fat for any one to eat. As

he was pursuing his improvements in Leicestershire, Culley prosecuted

similar ones in Northumberland in both sheep and cattle.

Under the management of these enlightened men the disproportionate mass

of bone was reduced, and flesh increased, and the whole figure assumed

a regular and handsome contour. The quality of the meat was as greatly

improved.

Under the operation of the Corn Laws the price of wheat rose to one

hundred and fifty-six shillings a quarter in 1801, and the enclosure of

waste lands kept pace accordingly; and upwards of a million of acres

were enclosed every ten years. From 1800 the amount of enclosure in

ten years was a million and a half of acres. The rapid increase of

population, through the growth of manufactures, and the introduction of

canals, as well as the fact that the people at large began to abandon

the use of oats and rye in bread, and to use wheat, promoted the growth

of that grain immensely. In 1793 Sir John Sinclair established the

Board of Agriculture, which was incorporated, and received an annual

grant from Parliament. The indefatigable Arthur Young was elected its

secretary, and agricultural surveys of the kingdom were made. The

reports of these were published, adding greatly to a comprehension

of the real state of cultivation. In 1784 Young had commenced the

publication of the "Annals of Agriculture," by which invaluable

information was diffused, and new prizes were offered by the Board for

improvements, and great annual sheep-shearings were held at Woburn

and Holkham, by the Duke of Bedford and Mr. Coke, afterwards Lord

Leicester, which tended to stimulate the breed of better sheep. The

king himself had his model farms, and introduced merino sheep from

Spain. It was long, however, before the better modes of ploughing could

be introduced amongst the farmers. The Scots were the first to reduce

the number of the horses which drew the plough, using only two, whilst

in England might still be seen a heavy, clumsy machine drawn by from

four to six horses, doing less work, and that work less perfectly.

On the arrival of peace the fall of agricultural prices ruined great

numbers who had pushed their speculations and land purchases beyond

their legitimate means; but the Corn Laws again buoyed up both

farmers and landlords, and the progress of improvement continued.

Draining strong lands, manuring light ones with lime and marl, and the

introduction of artificial grasses, added incalculably to the produce

of the country. Turnips enabled the farmer to maintain his cattle

and sheep in high condition during the winter, and the introduction

of the Swedish turnip and mangel-wurzel extended this advantage till

rye, rye-grass, sainfoin, and clover became plentiful. Before the end

of the reign rentals had doubled, and lands, even in hilly districts,

where it had been supposed that nothing but oats would grow, and where

the reapers were often obliged to shake the snow from the corn as they

cut it, were seen producing good wheat, and, from the better system of

husbandry, at a much earlier period of autumn.

With the reign of George III. began the real era of civil engineering.

With respect to our highways there had been various Parliamentary

enactments since the Revolution of 1688; but still, at the commencement

of George III.'s reign, the condition of the greater part of our

public roads was so dreadful as now to be almost incredible. Acts of

Parliament continued to be passed for their amendment, but what was

their general state we learn from the invaluable "Tours" of Arthur

Young. He describes one leading from Billericay to Tilbury, in Essex,

as so narrow that a mouse could not pass by any carriage, and so deep

in mud that chalk-waggons were continually sticking fast in them,

till so many were in that predicament that the waggoners put twenty

or thirty of their horses together to pull them out. He describes the

same state of things in almost every part of the country--in Norfolk,

Suffolk, Wiltshire, and Lancashire. Some of them had ruts four feet

deep by measure, and into these ruts huge stones were dropped to enable

waggons to pass at all; and these, in their turn, broke their axles

by the horrible jolting, so that within eighteen miles he saw three

waggons lying in this condition. Notwithstanding, from 1785 to 1800 no

fewer than six hundred and forty-three Acts of Parliament regarding

roads were passed. But scarcely a penny of the money collected at the

toll-bars went to the repair of the roads, but only to pay the interest

of the debt on their original construction. Whatever was raised was

divided amongst the members of the body known as the trustees for

the original fund; and though many Acts of Parliament limited this

interest, means were found for evading the restriction.

[Illustration:

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

ROBERT BURNS.

JOHN KEATS. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

]

In Lancashire and Cheshire the principal roads were paved; but as there

grew a necessity for more rapid transit of mails and stage-coaches, we

find, from a tour by Adam Walker to the Lakes in 1792, that a better

system had been introduced; the paved roads were in many places pulled

up, and the stones broken small; and he describes the roads generally

as good, or wonderfully improved since the "Tours" of Arthur Young.

Except in the county of Derby, the highways were excellent, and broken

stones were laid by the roadsides ready for repairs.

But it was not till the days of Telford and Macadam that the system

of road-making received its chief improvements. The reform in roads

commenced in Scotland. Those which had been cut through the Highlands

after the Rebellions of 1715 and 1745, chiefly under the management

of General Wade, set the example, and showed the advantage of

promoting communication, as well as of enabling the military to scour

the mountains. In 1790 Lord Dare introduced the practice of laying

out roads by the spirit-level, and they were conducted round hills

instead of being carried over them. In 1802 a Board of Commissioners

for Roads and Bridges in Scotland was established, and Thomas Telford

was appointed the engineer. This able man had now a full opportunity

for showing his knowledge of road-making. He laid out the new routes

on easy inclines, shortened and improved the old routes by new and

better cuttings, and threw bridges of an excellent construction over

the streams. Where the bottom was soft or boggy he made it firm by

a substratum of solid stones, and levelled the surface with stones

broken small. Attention was paid to side-drains for carrying away the

water, and little was left for the after-plans of Macadam. Yet Macadam

has monopolised the fame of road-making, and little has been heard of

Telford's improvements, although he was occasionally called in where

Macadam could not succeed, because the latter refused to make the

same solid bottom. This was the case in the Archway Road at Highgate.

Macadam's main principle of road-making was in breaking his material

small, and his second _principle_ might be called the care which he

exercised in seeing his work well done. For these services he received

two grants from Parliament, amounting to ten thousand pounds, and

the offer of knighthood, the latter of which he would not accept for

himself, but accepted it for his eldest son.

Telford, under the commission for Scotland, thoroughly revolutionised

the roads of that country. From Carlisle to the extremity of Caithness,

and from east to west of Scotland, he intersected the whole country

with beautiful roads, threw bridges of admirable construction over

the rivers, and improved many of the harbours, as those of Banff,

Peterhead, Fraserburgh, Fortrose, Cullen, and Kirkwall. The extent of

new road made by him was about one thousand miles, and he threw one

thousand two hundred bridges over rivers, some of them wild mountain

torrents.

The next step in the increase of means of traffic was the construction

of canals. The rivers had previously been rendered more navigable by

removing obstructions, deepening channels, and making good towing-paths

along their banks; but now it was projected to make artificial rivers.

In this scheme, Richard Brindley, under the patronage of the Duke of

Bridgewater, was the great engineer; and his intrepid genius dictated

to him to carry these canals over hills by locks, over rivers by

aqueducts, and through the heart of hills by tunnels. These enterprises

at that moment appeared, to the ordinary run of civil engineers,

as rash experiments, which were sure to prove abortive. As all new

ideas are, these ideas, now so commonplace, were ridiculed by the

wise ones as little short of madness. Mr. Brindley's first great work

was the formation of the Duke of Bridgewater's canal, from Worsley

to Manchester. In this he at once proved all his plans of locks,

tunnels, and aqueducts. He conducted his canal by an aqueduct over the

river Irwell, at an elevation of thirty-nine feet; and those learned

engineers who had laughed at the scheme as "a castle in the air," might

now see boats passing over the river at that height with the greatest

ease, while other boats were being drawn up the Irwell against the

stream and under the aqueduct with five times the labour. At Worsley

the canal was conducted into the very heart of the coal-mine by a

tunnel, with branches, which conducted the boats up to the different

parts of the mine, so that the coal could be loaded on the spot where

it was dug. The immediate effect of this canal was to reduce coals in

Manchester to half the former price; and the canal being extended so

as to connect it with the Mersey, at Runcorn, it reduced the freight

of goods from Manchester to Liverpool to the same extent, from twelve

shillings to six shillings per ton, the land carriage having been forty

shillings. Brindley was next engaged to execute the Grand Trunk Canal,

which united the Trent and Mersey, carrying it through Birmingham,

Chesterfield, and to Nottingham. This was commenced in 1766, and

exhibited further examples of his undaunted skill, and, as he had been

laughed at by the pedants of the profession, he now in his turn laughed

at their puny mediocrity. One of his tunnels, at Harecastle Hill, in

Staffordshire, was two thousand eight hundred and eighty yards long,

twelve feet wide, nine high, and in some parts seventy yards below the

surface of the ground. This tunnel, after half a century's use, was

found too confined for the traffic, and a new one, much wider, was made

by Telford. By this time the art of tunnelling had made great progress,

and whilst Brindley required eleven years to complete his tunnel,

Telford made his much larger one in three. Many causes intervened to

check for a time the progress of canals, so that from 1760 to 1774 only

nineteen Acts were passed for them; but in the two years of 1793 and

1794 no fewer than thirty-six new Bills were introduced to Parliament,

with others for extending and amending rivers, making altogether

forty-seven Acts, the expenditure on the canals of these two years'

projection amounting to five million three hundred thousand pounds. The

work now went on rapidly, and investments in canal shares exhibited

at that day, in miniature, the great fever of railway speculation at

a later period. Lines of canals were made to connect the Thames, the

Tweed, the Severn, and the Mersey; so that the great ports of London,

Liverpool, Hull, and Bristol were connected by them, and put into

communication with nearly all the great inland manufacturing towns. In

1779 a ship-canal was completed from the Forth to the Clyde--a work

proposed as early as the reign of Charles II. This canal, thirty-five

miles in length, had thirty-nine locks, which carried the canal to a

height of one hundred and fifty-six feet above the sea, and it crossed

the river Kelvin by an aqueduct eighty-three feet from the bed of

the river to the top of the masonry. A few years later a much larger

ship-canal united Gloucester to the Severn, and wonderfully increased

the trade and growth of that city.

Telford succeeded to Brindley, with all his boldness and skill, and

with much extended experience. He executed the Ellesmere canal, which

occupied a length of upwards of a hundred miles, connecting the rivers

Severn, Dee, and Mersey. In the construction of this canal Telford

introduced a bold, but successful, novelty. In aqueducts, instead of

puddling their bottoms with clay, which was not proof against the

effects of frost, he cased them with iron, and adopted the same means

when he had to pass through quicksands or mere bog. Some of Telford's

aqueducts were stupendous works. The Chirk aqueduct passed, at seventy

feet above the river, on ten arches of forty feet span, and cost twenty

thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight pounds. The aqueduct over the

Dee passed at a height of one hundred and twenty-one feet above low

water, and consisted of a great trough of cast-iron plates, supported

on eighteen piers, and having a towing-path of cast-iron, supported

on cast-iron pillars. This aqueduct took ten years in building, and

cost, with its embankments, forty-seven thousand pounds. Tunnels much

larger than that at Harecastle Hill were executed. That at Sapperton,

on the Thames and Severn canal, executed by Mr. Whitworth, was nearly

two miles and a half long, ran two hundred and fifty feet below the

summit of the hill, and was large enough for boats of seventy tons

burden. This was completed in 1788. These daring enterprises led to the

design of a tunnel under the Thames, from Gravesend to Tilbury; but

this was abandoned for want of capital. In 1804 a like attempt was made

at Rotherhithe, but stopped from the same cause, and was not completed

till 1843 by Sir Mark Isambard Brunel. Between 1758 and 1801 no fewer

than sixty-five Acts of Parliament were passed for making or extending

canals. At the end of that period canals extended over upwards of three

thousand miles, and had cost upwards of thirteen millions sterling.

In fact, the bulk of canal work was done by this time, though not

some few works of great importance. The Leeds and Liverpool canal,

begun in 1770, but not completed till 1816, opened up connection

with a vast manufacturing district; and the Rochdale, Huddersfield,

and Hull canals gave access for the Baltic traffic into the heart of

Lancashire. The Paddington and Regent's Canals wonderfully promoted the

intercourse between the interior and the metropolis. In the Highlands,

the Caledonian Canal, connecting the string of lakes between Inverness

and the Atlantic, gave passage to ships of large burden. At the end

of this reign the aggregate length of canals in England and Wales was

two thousand one hundred and sixty miles; in Scotland, two hundred and

twelve; in Ireland, two hundred and fifty; total, two thousand six

hundred and twenty-two miles. The attention paid to roads and canals

necessitated the same to bridges; and during this reign many new

structures of this kind were erected, and much improvement attained in

their formation. In 1776 a totally new kind of bridge was commenced at

Coalbrook Dale, and completed in 1779; this was of cast-iron, having a

single arch of one hundred feet span, and containing three hundred and

seventy-eight and a half tons of metal. Telford greatly improved on

this idea, by erecting an iron bridge over the Severn, at Buildwas, in

1796, having an arch of one hundred and thirty feet span.

[Illustration: WATERLOO BRIDGE, LONDON, IN 1890.]

Half the London bridges were built, or rebuilt, during this period.

Waterloo Bridge was begun in 1811, and completed by its designer and

architect, John Rennie, on the 18th of June, 1817, having cost upwards

of a million sterling. It is not only the longest of the Thames

bridges, but was pronounced by Canova the finest bridge in the world,

and is justly universally admired. Rennie built Southwark Bridge, an

iron one, at a cost of eight hundred thousand pounds, and completed

it in 1819, its erection occupying five years. Sir John Rennie, his

son, built the new London Bridge from the designs of his father; but

this was not begun till six years after the death of George III., nor

finished till 1831, at a cost of five hundred and six thousand pounds.

Iron suspension bridges were also introduced towards the end of this

reign. Chain bridges had been erected in China for nearly two thousand

years, and rope bridges in India and South America still earlier. In

England a foot-bridge of iron chains was erected at Middleton, over

the Tees, in the middle of the eighteenth century. In 1816 a bridge of

iron wire was thrown across the Gala Water; and another, on a different

principle, the following year, was erected over the Tweed, at King's

Meadows. But now much greater and more complete works of the kind were

to be executed. Captain (afterwards Sir Samuel) Brown introduced many

improvements into these structures. He substituted iron ropes for

hempen ones, thereby forming cable-chains, like those used in Wales

on quarry tram-roads, and these he applied to suspension bridges. In

1819 he was commissioned to construct an iron suspension bridge over

the Tweed, near Kelso, called the Union Bridge, which he completed in

1820, at a cost of five thousand pounds. In 1827 the first suspension

bridge was thrown over the Thames by Mr. William Tierney Clarke; and in

1818 Telford commenced his great work of throwing a suspension bridge

over the Menai Strait, near Bangor, which he completed in 1825. The

main opening of this stupendous work is five hundred and sixty feet

wide, and one hundred feet above high-water mark. The length of the

roadway of the bridge is one thousand feet. The cost was one hundred

and twenty thousand pounds. This was Telford's _chef-d'œuvre_. But the

same neighbourhood was destined to see a more stupendous structure

span the Strait from the Welsh shore to Anglesey. This was the tubular

railway bridge, connecting the London and Holyhead line, within view

of Telford's elegant suspension bridge. This was erected by Robert

Stephenson, from his own design, greatly improved by suggestions from

William Fairbairn of Manchester. It was completed in October, 1850,

at a cost of six hundred and twenty-five thousand eight hundred and

sixty-five pounds. Further description of this great work is not proper

here, as it belongs to a later date, but it seemed fit to mention it in

passing, as an evidence of the progress of the engineering science in

the reign of Victoria.

[Illustration: MENAI SUSPENSION AND TUBULAR BRIDGES. (_From a

Photograph by Hudson._)]

Great improvements were made during this reign in the harbours,

especially by Telford and Rennie. Telford's harbour work in Scotland we

have already mentioned; Rennie's formations or improvements of harbours

were at Ramsgate, London, Hull, and Sheerness; he also built the Bell

Rock Lighthouse, on the same principle as the Eddystone Lighthouse,

built by Smeaton, a self-taught engineer, just before the accession of

George III.

The mechanical invention, however, destined to produce the most

extraordinary revolution in social life was that of railways, which

during this reign were progressing towards the point where, combined

with the steam-engine, they were to burst forth into an activity and

strength astonishing to the whole world. Tram-roads--that is, roads

with lines of smooth timber for the wheels of waggons to run upon--had

been in use in the Newcastle collieries for a century before. In

1767, at the Coalbrook Dale Iron Works, iron plates were substituted

for wood, and by this simple scheme one horse could, with ease, draw

as much as ten on an ordinary road. In 1776 iron flanges, or upright

edges, were used at the collieries of the Duke of Norfolk, near

Sheffield, and after this time they became common at all collieries,

both above and below ground. In 1801 an iron railway, by a joint-stock

company, was opened from Wandsworth to Croydon. Three years before iron

railways had been introduced to convey the slates from Lord Penrhyn's

quarries, in Carnarvonshire, to the Menai Strait for shipment, and

they were attached to canals for the conveyance of goods to and from

them. At the end of this reign there were two hundred and twenty-five

miles of iron railroads in the neighbourhood of Newcastle-on-Tyne, and

upwards of three hundred miles in the single county of Glamorgan.

Before the termination of the reign there were active preparations for

putting steam-engines on all iron railroads. So early as 1758, Watt,

who afterwards did so much in the construction of steam-engines, had an

idea that locomotive engines might be put on such roads. In 1770 such

an engine was actually made and worked by John Theophilus Cugnot, in

Paris, but he had not discovered sufficient means of controlling it.

In 1802 Messrs. Trevethick and Vivian exhibited such an engine running

along the streets in London. In 1805 the same gentlemen again exhibited

one of their engines working on a tram-road at Merthyr Tydvil, drawing

ten tons of iron at the rate of five miles an hour; and in 1811 Mr.

Blenkinsop was running an engine on the Middleton Colliery, near

Leeds, drawing a hundred tons on a dead level at the rate of three and

a half miles an hour, and going at the rate of ten miles when only

lightly loaded. Blenkinsop had made the wheels of his engines to act

by cogs on indented rails; for there was a strong persuasion at that

period that the friction of plain wheels on plain rails would not be

sufficient to enable the engine to progress with its load. The folly

of this idea had already been shown on all the colliery lines in the

kingdom, and by the engine of Trevethick and Vivian at Merthyr. The

fallacy, however, long prevailed. But during this time Thomas Gray

was labouring to convince the public of the immense advantages to be

derived from steam trains on railways. In five editions of his work,

and by numerous memorials to Ministers, Parliament, lord mayors, etc.,

he showed that railroads must supersede coaches for passengers, and

waggons and canals for goods. He was the first projector of a general

system of railroads, laid down maps for comprehensive general lines for

both England and Ireland, invented turn-tables, and very accurately

calculated the cost of constructing lines. For these services he was

termed a madman, and the _Edinburgh Review_ recommended that he should

be secured in a strait jacket. In his "Life of George Stephenson"

Dr. Smiles takes exception to the statement that Thomas Gray was the

originator of railways, and transfers that term to Stephenson. Let

us be correct; Gray was the projector, Stephenson the constructor of

railways. But it is not to be supposed that Gray had sold five editions

of his work without Stephenson, and perhaps every engineer, having read

and profited by it. Yet, so little had Stephenson any idea of the real

scope and capacity of railways, that it was not till five years after

the running of his engines on such lines, by Dr. Smiles's own showing,

that he ever imagined such a thing as their becoming the general medium

of human transit. He tells us Mr. Edward Pease suggested to him to

put an old long coach on the Darlington and Stockton line, attached

to the luggage trucks, and see if people might not wish to travel by

it. Gray had demonstrated all this long before. He stood in the place

of the architect, Stephenson only of the builder who carries out the

architect's design. Seven years only after the death of George III.

the railway line between Manchester and Liverpool was commenced, and

from its successful opening, on the 15th of September, 1830, dates the

amazing development of the present railway system.

[Illustration: "A HUNDRED YEARS AGO."

FROM THE PAINTING BY GEORGE WRIGHT

By permission of E. W. Savory, Ltd.]

The earliest idea of a steam-engine was that given by the Marquis of

Worcester, in his "Century of Inventions," in 1663, which idea he

obtained from De Caus, and reduced to action in London. The next step

was to Papin's Digester, and then to Savery's so-called "Atmospheric

Engine." This, improved by Newcomen in 1711, was introduced to drain

mines in all parts of the kingdom, but especially in the coal-mines of

the north and midland counties, and the copper mines of Cornwall. By

its means many mines long disused through the accumulation of water

were drained and made workable, and others were sunk much deeper.

Smeaton, in 1769, greatly improved this engine, which, from its rapid

working of a horizontal beam, was called by the miners a "Whimsey,"

as having a whimsical look. Watt, then a student in the University of

Glasgow, commenced a series of experiments upon it, which, between

1759 and 1782, raised the engine to a pitch of perfection which made

it applicable not only to draining water out of mines, but, by the

discovery of the rotatory motion, enabled it to propel any kind of

machinery, spin cotton, grind in mills of all kinds, and propel ships

and carriages. Watt was greatly aided in his efforts by Mr. Matthew

Boulton, and their engines were manufactured at Soho Works, near

Birmingham. They did not, however, enjoy the fruits of their patents

for protecting their inventions without many most unprincipled attempts

to invade their rights by masters of mines and others, by which they

were involved in very harassing law-suits. The first application of the

steam-engine to the machinery of a cotton-mill was at Papplewick, in

Nottinghamshire, in 1785, and the first mill built for the employment

of machinery driven by an engine was in Manchester, in 1789. The first

application of the engine to propel a vessel was at Dalswinton, on the

Clyde, in 1788, the boat being constructed by Patrick Miller, James

Taylor, and William Symington. In the following year these inventors

made a second experiment on the Forth and Clyde Canal at the Carron

Works, with perfect success, the vessel going at the rate of nearly

seven miles an hour. Symington was probably the real machinist in this

firm, and in 1802 he made a tug-boat on the Forth and Clyde Canal,

under the patronage of Lord Dundas, which was worked extremely well by

its engine. In 1807 Fulton followed up these experiments by launching

a steam-boat on the Hudson, in America, after having in vain solicited

the patronage of the British and French Governments for his enterprise.

The proposal of Fulton, submitted to the Academy of Paris, was received

with a burst of laughter, and Napoleon abandoned the project in deep

disgust at having been, as he supposed, made a dupe of by Fulton.

We have pointed out on the preceding page the period of the first

application of the steam-engine to railways.

By the marvellous aids of canals and steam-engines manufacturing power

became most immensely augmented in all directions, but especially in

the spinning and weaving of cotton goods. The machines invented by

Wyatt and Paul in 1733, and improved by Arkwright in 1767, if not

invented anew, without knowledge of Wyatt and Paul's plan of spinning

by rollers--a moot point; the spinning-jenny with seven spindles,

invented by James Hargreaves, a weaver near Blackburn, in 1767; and

the mule-jenny, combining the working of the machines of Arkwright and

Hargreaves, by Samuel Crompton, in 1779, completely superseded spinning

cotton yarn by hand. These machines were first worked by water power,

but steam power was used after the steam-engine had been invented; and

the growth of cotton-spinning became rapid beyond conception, spreading

over all Lancashire and the midland counties in a marvellous manner.

The cotton-mills of Robert Peel, in Lancashire and Staffordshire; of

the Strutts, at Belper, in Derbyshire; of Dale, at New Lanark; of

Robinson, at Papplewick; and Arkwright, at Cromford, which raised these

gentlemen to vast wealth, being only the leviathans amongst swarming

concerns of less dimensions.

To these, in 1785, the Rev. Dr. Edmund Cartwright introduced a loom

for weaving by water or steam power, which soon superseded hand-loom

weaving. In 1803 Mr. H. Horrocks greatly improved this, and from this

germ has grown up the system of weaving cottons, silks, and woollens

by machinery. Add to this the application of similar machinery to

calico-printing, and the like to weaving of lace, invented by Robert

Frost, of Nottingham, or by a working mechanic of that town named

Holmes, which afterwards received many improvements, and we have the

varied means by which the manufacturing power of England was raised

far above that of all the world; and which, reaching other countries

in spite of legislative impediments, soon established similar

manufactures in France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and America.

In Great Britain alone the importation of raw cotton was increased

from 4,764,589 lbs. in 1771 to 151,000,000 lbs. in 1818; and such was

the spread of trade of all kinds from the use of machinery, that our

exports of manufactured goods in 1800, when the European nations were

incapacitated for manufacturing by Napoleon's general embargo, amounted

to £116,000,000.

Almost every other manufacture shared in this surprising impulse

from machinery and the spirit of invention. It was an age of new

creations and of unprecedented energies. In 1763 Josiah Wedgwood, of

the Staffordshire Potteries, commenced that career of improvement

in the biscuit, form, and printing of porcelain which constituted a

new era in the art. At that time the French fine pottery was so much

superior to the English that it was extensively imported. In fact, it

was a period when taste in every department of art was at the lowest

ebb. Wedgwood, being a good chemist, not only improved the body of his

earthenware, but, being a man of classical taste, introduced a grace

and elegance of form before unknown to British pottery. He invented

a new kind of composition so hard and marble-like that it resisted

both fire and acids; and in this he moulded statuettes, cameos, and

medallions from the Greek originals, of great beauty. Sir William

Hamilton having brought over from Italy a quantity of antique vases,

etc., Wedgwood benefited by them to introduce fresh forms and colouring

in his wares, and probably on this account called his pottery-works

Etruria. He had the aid of Mr. Chisholm, a practical chemist, in his

researches into the best composition and colours for his porcelain,

and his improvements laid the foundation of the great pottery trade of

Staffordshire.

Many improvements were made also in the glass manufacture during this

reign, and more would undoubtedly have been made but for the very heavy

duties upon it to help to support the ruinous wars of the period. In

1760, the first year of the reign, crown glass is said to have been

introduced. In 1763 the first glass plates for looking-glasses and

coach-windows were made at Lambeth. In 1779 flint-glass was first made;

and about that time plate-glass. The duties on different kinds of glass

at that date were about one hundred and forty thousand pounds per

annum. So oppressive were those duties that, in 1785, the St. Helens

Plate-glass Company petitioned Parliament, stating that, in consequence

of the weight of taxation, notwithstanding an expenditure of one

hundred thousand pounds, they had not been able to declare a dividend.

The introduction of the steam-engine, railroads, and canals enabled the

coal-miners during this reign to extend the supply of coals enormously.

In 1792 the coal-mines of Durham and Northumberland alone maintained

twenty-six thousand two hundred and fifty persons, and employed a

capital of three million one hundred and thirty thousand pounds--a very

small amount of both people and money as compared with the workers and

capital engaged in the trade since the expansion of the manufacturing

and steam systems. The coal-fields of Durham and Northumberland extend

to nearly eight hundred square miles, but the beds in Northumberland,

Durham, Yorkshire, the Midland Counties, South of Scotland, and

Ireland, are still immense and not yet fully explored. Fresh strata are

discovered as steam power enables us to go deeper. In 1817 Sir Humphry

Davy perfected his safety-lamp, which, by means of a simple wire

gauze, enabled the miner to work amid the most explosive gases. These

lamps, however, were not able to protect the colliers from their own

carelessness, and most horrible destruction, from time to time, took

place amongst them from neglect.

With the reign of George III. commenced a series of improvements in the

manufacture of iron, which have led not only to a tenfold production

of that most useful of metals, but to changes in its quality which

before were inconceivable. Towards the end of the reign of George II.

the destruction of the forests in smelting iron-ore was so great as

to threaten their extinction, and with it the manufacture of iron in

Britain. Many manufacturers had already transferred their businesses

to Russia, where wood was abundant and cheap. It was then found that

coke made from coal was a tolerable substitute for charcoal, and, in

1760, the very first year of the reign of George III., the proprietors

of the Carron Works in Scotland began the use of pit-coal. Through

the scientific aid of Smeaton and Watt, they applied water-, and

afterwards steam-power, to increase the blast of their furnaces to make

it steady and continuous, instead of intermitting as from bellows; and

they increased the height of their chimneys. By these means, Dr. John

Roebuck, the founder of these works, became the first to produce pig

iron by the use of coal. This gave great fame to the Carron Works, and

they received large orders from Government for cannon and cannon-balls.

It was some time, however, before enough iron could be produced to meet

the increasing demand for railroads, iron bridges, etc.; and so late as

1781 fifty thousand tons were imported annually from Russia and Sweden.

[Illustration: JAMES WATT. (_After the Portrait by Sir W. Beechey,

R.A._)]

The employment of pit-coal had not reached perfection, and in 1785

the Society of Arts offered a premium for the making of fine bar

iron with pit-coal. This object was accomplished by Mr. Cort, an

iron-founder of Gloucestershire, by exposing the pig iron on the

hearth of a reverberatory furnace to the flame of pit-coal. This

process was improved into what was called _puddling_, in puddling or

reverberatory furnaces. Cort also introduced the drawing out of iron

between cylindrical rollers; but he became ruined in his experiments,

and other iron-masters of more capital came in to reap the profit. Many

years passed before a pension was conferred on some of his children

for his services. In 1755 the whole population of Carron was only

one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four; in 1795 the workmen alone

employed in the works were one thousand, the population four thousand,

when the foundry had five blast furnaces, sixteen air furnaces, three

cupola furnaces, and consumed one hundred and thirty-six tons of coals

daily. It supplied to the Government eleven thousand tons annually

of cannon, mortars, shot, shells, etc.; to the East India Company

six thousand tons; and to all customers together twenty-six thousand

tons. The growth of the iron trade in Great Britain, through these

improvements, may be seen from the fact that in 1802 there were one

hundred and sixty-eight blast furnaces, producing two hundred and

twenty thousand tons of iron; in 1820 the annual production of iron

was four hundred thousand tons; in 1845 the production was calculated

at twice that amount--that is, in twenty-five years the production

had doubled itself. In 1771 the use of wire ropes, instead of hempen

ones, was suggested by M. Bougainville, and this was made a fact by

Captain Brown, in 1811. Before this, in 1800, Mr. Mushet, of Glasgow,

discovered the art of converting malleable iron, or iron ore, into cast

steel; and in 1804 Samuel Lucas, of Sheffield, further extended the

benefit by the discovery of a mode of converting any castings from

pig iron at once into malleable iron, or cast steel, so that knives,

forks, snuffers, scythes, and all kinds of articles, were converted

into steel, "without any alterative process whatever between the blast

furnace and the melting-pot." In 1815 it was calculated that two

hundred thousand persons were employed in manufacturing articles of

iron, the annual value of which was ten million pounds.

With the war the manufacture of guns and arms of all kinds was greatly

increased, and several important improvements were made in the

construction of gun-barrels and their breeches. All kinds of cutlery

were improved, but, at the same time, both Government, by contractors,

and foreign countries, by merchants, were imposed on by articles

that had more show than use, to the serious injury of the British

reputation. Knives and razors were sent out of mere iron, and our

pioneers and sappers and miners were often supplied with axes, picks,

and shovels more resembling lead than iron.

Great attention during this reign was devoted to the manufacturing

of clocks and watches. To such eminence had the English manufacture

of watches arrived, that in 1799 it was calculated that the value of

watches and marine chronometers alone manufactured in and around London

amounted to a million of money yearly. In 1762 John Harrison claimed

the reward offered by Act of Parliament for a chronometer which would

ascertain the longitude within sixty, forty, or thirty miles. For the

least accurate of these the reward was ten thousand pounds, for the

next more accurate fifteen thousand pounds, and for the best twenty

thousand pounds. Harrison produced a chronometer which, after two

voyages to the West Indies, entitled him to the highest prize, but a

fresh Act of Parliament was passed, refusing him more than two thousand

five hundred pounds until he had made known the principle of his

invention, and assigned his chronometer for the public use. Even when

these new terms were complied with he was only to receive ten thousand

pounds, and the remainder on the correctness of the chronometer having

been sufficiently tested. Harrison very justly complained of these

new stipulations, and of the delays thus interposed; but in 1767,

nine years before his decease, he obtained the full amount of the

premium. In 1774 a premium of five thousand pounds was offered by Act

of Parliament for a chronometer that should ascertain the longitude

within one degree of a great circle, or sixty geographical miles;

seven thousand five hundred pounds for one that would ascertain the

longitude within two-thirds of that distance; and ten thousand pounds

for one that would ascertain it within half a degree. This called

out the efforts of various competitors--Harrison, Meadge, Kendal,

Coombe, and numbers of others. In 1777 Meadge produced two, which were

submitted to the test of the Astronomer-Royal, Dr. Maskelyne, and

pronounced unfavourably upon; but Meadge petitioned Parliament against

this decision, and, on the report of a committee on his chronometers,

he was awarded a premium of two thousand five hundred pounds.

In 1783 the English carriage-builders, who had before been considered

inferior in elegance to the French makers, began to receive large

orders from Paris itself. In 1759 Walter Taylor and son introduced

machinery for cutting blocks, sheaves, and pins for ships. Saw-mills

were also introduced into Great Britain, in 1767, by Mr. Dingley, of

Limehouse.

In the art of printing, the process of stereotyping (originally

invented by William Ged) was re-invented by Mr. Tulloch, in 1780. In

1801 lithography was introduced into England from Germany, but was not

much used till Mr. Ackermann began to employ it, in 1817. In 1814 steam

was first applied to printing in the _Times_ office.

The art of coining received, like other things, a new facility and

perfection from the application of the steam-engine. Messrs. Boulton

and Watt, at the Soho Works, set up machinery, in 1788, which rolled

out the metal, cut out the blanks, or circular pieces, shook them in

bags to take off the rough edges, and stamped the coins--in higher

perfection than ever before attained--at the rate of from thirty to

forty thousand per hour.

To this prolific reign belongs also the discovery of coal-gas. In 1792

William Murdoch, an engineer, lighted his own house with it in Redruth,

in Cornwall. The same gentleman illuminated the Soho Works of Messrs.

Boulton and Watt with it at the Peace of Amiens, in 1802; and in the

year 1804 some of the cotton mills in Manchester began to use it. In

1807 it was used in Golden Lane, in London; in 1809 Mr. Winsor, a

German, lit up Pall Mall with it; and in 1813 the first chartered gas

company was established in London, and gas soon spread through all the

large towns.

In astronomy, Herschel discovered the planet Uranus in 1781; in 1802

he published, in the "Philosophical Transactions," his catalogue of

five hundred new nebulæ and nebulous stars; and in 1803 announced his

discovery of the motion of double stars round each other. In chemistry,

Sir Humphry Davy, in 1807, extracted their metallic bases from the

fixed alkalies; in 1808 demonstrated the same fact as it regarded

the alkaline earths; in 1811 discovered the true nature of chlorine;

in 1815 invented his safety lamp; and in 1817 (as already mentioned)

brought it to perfection. In 1804 Leslie published discoveries of the

nature and properties of heat; in 1808 Dalton announced his atomic

theory; and in 1814 Wollaston completed its development and proof.

Amongst the fine arts, the first to which we direct attention, that

is, music, was warmly patronised by the Royal Family, and therefore

maintained the status which it had acquired in the last reign, though

it produced no great original genius. Church music continued to be

cultivated, and the anthems of Kent, published in 1773, and those of

Nares, published in 1778, were of much merit. To these we may add the

services and anthems of Doctors Hayes, Dupuis, Arnold, Cooke, Ayrton,

and of Mr. Battishill. The "Shunamite Woman," an oratorio by Arnold,

appeared at a later date, as well as the anthems and services of Dr.

Whitfield.

In the early part of the reign the English operas of Augustine Arne,

"Artaxerxes" and "Love in a Village"--the former principally a

translation from Metastasio--were much admired. For the rest, there

were numbers of lovers and professors of the art, both in sacred,

operatic, and glee music. The Catch Club was formed in 1761, and

zealously supported, as well as the Concerts of Ancient Music in 1776.

Under the patronage of this society, and particularly of his Majesty,

took place the celebrated Handel "Commemoration" in Westminster Abbey,

in May and June of 1784. During the early part of the reign, too,

appeared several distinguished works in this department. At the head

of these stood the "Histories of Music," by Sir John Hawkins and Dr.

Burney; Dibdin's "Musical Tour;" Dr. John Browne's "Dissertation on

Poetry and Music;" the "Letters" of Jackson, of Exeter; and Mason's

"Essays on Church Music." In the later portion of the reign there

was much love of music, but little original composition, except for

the stage, where Arnold, Shield, Storace, and Dibdin produced the

most delightful compositions. Arnold's "Castle of Andalusia," "Inkle

and Yarico," "The Surrender of Calais," and "The Mountaineers;" and

Shield's "Rosina," "The Poor Soldier," "The Woodman," and "The

Farmer," are universally admired. The sea songs of Charles Dibdin are

as imperishable as the British navy, to which they have given a renown

of its own. He wrote about one thousand four hundred songs, thirty

dramatic pieces, "A Musical Tour," and a "History of the Stage," and

was allowed, after all, to die in deep poverty, after charming the

world for half a century. During the latter part of the reign music

was in much esteem, and musical meetings in various parts of the

country--in London, the opera, Ancient Concerts, and performances by

foreign composers, such as Handel's "Messiah," Beethoven's "Mount of

Olives," Mozart's opera of "Don Giovanni," etc.--were flocked to, but

little native genius appeared.

During this reign architecture was in a state of transition, or,

rather, revolution, running through the Palladian, the Roman, the

Greek, and into the Gothic, with a rapidity which denoted the unsettled

ideas on the subject. At the commencement of the reign James Paine

and John Carr were the prevailing architects. Worksop Manor, since

pulled down, and Keddlestone, in Derbyshire, were the work of Paine;

but Robert Adam, an advocate for a Roman style, completed Keddlestone.

Carr built Harewood House, and others of a like character, chiefly

remarkable for Grecian porticos attached to buildings of no style

whatever. The Woods, of Bath, employed a spurious Grecian style in

the Crescent in that city, Queen's Square, the Pounds, etc., which,

however, acquired a certain splendour by their extent and _tout

ensemble_. To these succeeded Robert Taylor, the architect of the Bank

of England and other public buildings, in a manner half Italian, half

Roman. Sir William Chambers, of more purely Italian taste, has left

us Somerset House as a noble specimen of his talent. Robert and James

Adam erected numerous works in the semi-Roman semi-Italian style, as

Caenwood House, at Highgate, Portland Place, and the screen at the

Admiralty. In Portland Place Robert Adam set the example of giving the

space necessary for a great metropolis. James Wyatt, who succeeded

Chambers as Surveyor-General in 1800, destined to leave extensive

traces of his art, commenced his career by the erection of the

Pantheon, London, in the classical style, and then took up the Gothic

style, which had begun to have its admirers, and in which James Essex

had already distinguished himself by his restoration of the lantern of

Ely Cathedral, and in other works at Cambridge. Wyatt was employed to

restore some of the principal colleges at Oxford, and to do the same

work for the cathedral of Salisbury and Windsor Castle. In these he

showed that he had penetrated to a certain extent into the principles

of that order of architecture, but was far from having completely

mastered them. A greater failure was his erection of Fonthill Abbey,

for Beckford, the author of "Vathek," where he made a medley of half

an abbey, half a castle, with a huge central church tower, so little

based on the knowledge of the Gothic architects that in a few years

the tower fell. Wyatt, however, was a man of enterprising genius.

Co-temporary with Wyatt, George Dance made a much less happy attempt in

Gothic in the front of Guildhall, London; but he built Newgate and St.

Luke's Hospital in a very appropriate style. One of the most elegant

erections at this period was the Italian Opera House, by a foreigner,

Novosielsky, in 1789. Nor must we omit here the publication of John

Gwynn's "London and Westminster Improved," in 1766, by which he led

the way to the extensive opening up of narrow streets, and throwing

out of fresh bridges, areas, and thoroughfares, which have been since

realised, or which are still in progress.

[Illustration: _Schoolmaster_ _Lady_ _Parson_ _Gentleman_ _Servant_

COSTUMES AT THE END OF GEORGE III.'S REIGN.]

[Illustration: A VILLAGE MERRYMAKING.

FROM THE PAINTING BY W. P. FRITH, R.A., IN THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT

MUSEUM, SOUTH KENSINGTON.]

Sir John Soane, who had been a pupil of Dance, Holland, and Sir William

Chambers, introduced a more purely Greek style, and his achievements

may be seen in Dulwich Gallery and Trinity Church, Marylebone. The most

eminent disciples of this school were William Wilkins and Sir Robert

Smirke. Wilkins was a servile copyist, and the National Gallery is the

chief monument of his skill, or want of it. Sir Robert Smirke was of a

higher order, and his erection of Covent Garden Theatre, the Mint, the

Post Office, the College of Physicians, the law courts at Gloucester,

Lowther Castle, etc., speak for themselves. Nash, the contemporary

and successor of these architects, has left us abundance of his

Græco-Romano-Italian medleys in the church in Langham Place, Regent's

Park, and Buckingham Palace. The great merit of Nash was, that, like

the brothers Adam, he gave us space, and showed, as in Regent's Park,

what was needed for an immense metropolis. Towards the end of the

reign Gothic architecture was more cultivated, and one of Wyatt's

last works was Ashridge House, in Buckinghamshire, a vast and stately

Gothic pile, imposing in general effect, but far from pure in style.

Still less so was Eaton Hall, in Cheshire, built by William Pordon;

but the real Anglo-Gothic was now receiving the true development of

its principles by the works of James Bentham, Carter, John Britton;

and, finally, Thomas Rickman, in 1816, published his "Attempt to

Discriminate the Styles of English Architecture," which placed these

principles perspicuously before the public.

[Illustration: SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. (_After the Portrait by Himself._)]

Under Sir Joshua Reynolds a perfect revolution in the art of painting,

as practised in England, was effected. He threw aside past traditional

fashions, and returned to nature; and his portraits at once excited the

consternation of the painters of the day, and placed him in the very

first rank of artists. In 1768 was established the Royal Academy, and

amongst its foreign members were Benjamin West and Angelica Kauffmann.

West produced all his great works in England, and, however much they

may now be criticised, they showed an advance on past art in England,

and had the merit of introducing modern costume for modern heroes,

as in the "Death of General Wolfe," contrary to the advice of even

Reynolds himself. Barry made a spasmodic attempt to lead the public

back to what he deemed the classical, but in vain; and the successive

appearance of Wilson, Gainsborough, and Opie, in different styles,

but all genuinely English, established the public in its attachment

to the true English school. Wilson, during his lifetime, indeed, was

neglected, and died in poverty; but the next generation made the

_amende_ to his fame, though too late for his own enjoyment of it.

To Paul Sandby we owe the origin of the water-colour school, which

afterwards grew so extensive and so rich in production. Amongst eminent

painters of this portion of the reign we must mention Wright of Derby,

Mortimer, Stubbs and Sawrey, animal painters, and Copley, who, though

an American by birth, produced most of his works in England.

Of water-colour painters who extended the fame of the school were

Payne, Cozens, Glover, Girtin, and Turner; but Turner soon deserted

water for oil. In 1804 the Water-Colour Society was established,

and Turner was not amongst its numbers, having already gone over to

oil-painting; but there were Varley, Barrett, Hills, Rigaud, and

Pocock. Wild and Pugin were exhibitors of architectural drawings at

its exhibitions. Afterwards came Francia, Westall, Uwins, De Wint,

Mackenzie, Copley Fielding, Robson, Prout, Gandy, and Bonington. In

their rear, but extending beyond the reign, appeared a brilliant host.

In general art the names of Fuseli, Northcote, and Stothard stand

eminent, and were the foremost contributors to Alderman Boydell's

celebrated Shakespeare Gallery. There were also Hoppner, Beechey,

Morland; in Scotland, Sir William Allan and Sir Henry Raeburn. In

caricature Gillray was a worthy successor to Hogarth.

In 1805 a great step in British painting was made by the establishment

of the British Institution; and in 1813 this institution opened the

National Gallery. The annual exhibitions soon became enriched by the

consummate works of Hilton, Etty, Haydon, Briggs, Sir Thomas Lawrence

(in elegant portraits), Phillips, Shee, Carpenter, Harlow, Wilkie,

Mulready, Turner, Calcot, Collins, Landseer, Martin, Danby, Howard,

Cooper, Leslie, and Hone. No age in England had produced so illustrious

a constellation of painters, as varied in character as they were

masterly in artistic power.

The art of sculpture, like that of painting, took a new spring in this

reign, but the early part of it was encumbered by the tasteless works

of Wilton, Read, and Taylor. It remained for the genius of Banks,

Nollekens, Bacon, Baily, Behnes, and Chantrey, to place sculpture on

its proper elevation in England.

To the art of engraving Woollett and Strange gave a first-rate

eminence, and were successfully followed by Browne, Byrne, Rosker, and

Major. In mezzotint M. Ardell admirably rendered the portraits of Sir

Joshua Reynolds; and Smith, Green, Thomas, and Watson also excelled in

this class of engraving. In engravings for books Heath and Angus stand

pre-eminent; and Boydell's "Shakespeare" spread the taste, though his

illustrations were chiefly done in the inferior style of dot engraving.

In line engraving the names of Sharp, Sherwin, Fittler, Anker Smith,

Neagle, Lowry, Turrell, Scott, and others, are of high repute. In

landscape engraving no names, in the middle period of the reign, stood

more prominent than those of Middiman, Watt, Angus, Milton, Pouncey,

Peak, and Taylor.

There arose a second school of mezzotint engravers, the chief of whom

were Earlom, Reynolds, Daniell, Sutherland, and Westall. The strange

but intellectual Blake was both painter and his own engraver, in a

style of his own. Towards the end of the reign flourished, chiefly in

architectural illustrations, Le Keux, John and Henry, pupils of Bazire,

Roffe, Ransom, and Scott; in landscape, William and George Cooke,

William and Edward Finden, Byrne, and Pye; in portrait, Charles and

James Heath, John Taylor, Skelton, Burnet, Bromley, Robinson, Warren,

and Lewis.

In wood engraving, Thomas Bewick, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, revived the

art, and threw such fascination into it by the exquisite tail-pieces

in his "Natural History," that his name will always be associated with

this style of engraving.

Of the coinage of this reign little is to be said. It was of the most

contemptible character till Boulton and Watt, as already mentioned,

struck the copper pence in 1797 in a superior style. In 1818 was issued

a gold and silver coinage, which was entrusted to a foreign artist,

Pistrucci, and which was turned out of very unequal merit. Flaxman

would have produced admirable designs, and there was a medallist of

high talent, Thomas Wyon, who would have executed these designs most

ably. In fact, the best part of the silver coinage was produced by

Wyon, from the designs of Pistrucci.

In the early portion of the reign the manners and customs differed

little from those described in the preceding one. There was great

dissipation, and even coarseness of manners, amongst the nobility and

gentry. It was the custom to drink to intoxication at dinners, and

swearing still garnished the language of the wealthy as well as of the

low. Balls, routs, the opera, the theatre, with Vauxhall and Ranelagh,

filled up the time of the fashionable, and gaming was carried to an

extraordinary extent. Amongst our leading statesmen Charles Fox was

famous for this habit. Duelling was equally common, and infidelity

amongst fashionable people was of notorious prevalence. George III.

and his queen did what they could to discourage this looseness of

morals, and to set a different example; but the decorum of the Court

was long in passing into the wealthy classes around it. An affluent

middle class was fast mingling with the old nobility, and this brought

some degree of sobriety and public decency with it. Amongst the lower

classes dog-, cock-, and bull-fights were, during a great part of

the reign, the chief amusements, and the rudest manners continued to

prevail, because there was next to no education. Wesley, Whitefield,

and their followers, were the first to break into this condition of

heathenism. Robberies and murders abounded both in town and country,

and the police was of a very defective character. For the most part

there was none but the parish constable. The novels of Fielding and

Smollett are pictures of the rudeness and profligacy of these times.

The resources in the country of books and newspapers were few, and the

pot-house supplied the necessary excitement. The clergy were of a very

low tone, or were non-resident, and the farmers, getting rich, aped the

gentlemen, followed the hounds, and ended the day with a carouse.

Gradually, however, a more refined tone was diffusing itself. The

example of the head of the nation had not been without its effect.

The higher classes abandoned Ranelagh and Vauxhall to the middle and

lower classes, if they did not abandon their theatre, opera, and rout.

But the theatres, too, became more decorous, and the spread of what

had been called Methodism began to reach the higher classes through

such men as Wilberforce, and such women as the Countess of Huntingdon

and Hannah More. The most palpable drawback to this better state of

sentiment and manners was the profligacy of the Prince of Wales and

his associates. But towards the end of the reign a decided improvement

in both manners and morals had taken place. The momentous events

passing over the world, and in which Great Britain had the principal

agency, seemed to have rooted out much frivolity, and given a soberer

and higher tone to the public mind. The spread of a purer and more

humane literature baptised the community with a new and better spirit;

art added its refinements, and religion its restraints. The efforts

to introduce education amongst the people had begun, and the lowest

amusements of dog-fighting, cock-fighting, and bull-baiting were

discouraged and put down. The new birth of science, art, literature,

and manufactures was accompanied by a new birth of morals, taste, and

sentiment, and this, happily, was a true birth; and the growth of what

was then born has been proceeding ever since.

In the opening of the reign the gentlemen retained the full-skirted

coat, with huge cuffs, the cocked-hats and knee-breeches of the former

period. Pigtails were universal, and the more foppish set up their

hair in a high peak, like the women. The ladies had their hair turned

up on frames half a yard high, and this hairy mountain was ornamented

with strings of pearls or diamonds, or surmounted with a huge cap edged

with lace. They wore their waists as long as possible, with a peaked

stomacher, and hanging sleeves of Mecklenburg lace. Their gowns were of

the richest silks, satins, and brocades, their skirts flowing; and the

fan was an indispensable article.

In the army the cocked-hat and pigtail at first prevailed, but these

were soon dismissed, as well as the great jack-boots of the cavalry.

With the employment of the Hessian soldiers in the American war,

and afterwards on the Continent, there prevailed amongst English

gentlemen the Hessian boot; instead of the _queue_, cropped hair and

close-fitting small hats became the vogue. Powdering became profuse,

both amongst ladies and gentlemen, till Pitt taxed it, when it

vanished, except from the heads of particularly positive old gentlemen

and servants.

During the French war, when the Paris fashions were intercepted, much

variety in the fashion of dress took place amongst both gentlemen and

ladies; but before the peace had arrived the most tasteless costumes

had become general, and the waists of both sexes were elevated nearly

to their shoulders. The tight skirts and short waists of the ladies

gave them the most uncouth aspect imaginable; and the cut-away coats

and chimneypot hats of the gentlemen were by no means more graceful.

The military costume had undergone an equally complete revolution, and

with no better success.

The changes in furniture were not remarkable. During the French war a

rage for furniture on the classic model had taken place; but on the

return of peace Paris fashions were restored. Rosewood superseded

mahogany, and a more easy and luxurious style of sofa and couch was

adopted. There came also Pembroke tables, Argand lamps, register

stoves, Venetian and spring blinds, a variety of ladies' work-tables

and whatnots; and a more tasteful disposition of curtains and

ornamental articles purchased on the Continent.

CHAPTER V.

THE REIGN OF GEORGE IV.

Accession of George IV.--Meeting of Parliament--General

Election--Opening of the New Session--Dulness of Affairs--Brougham

on Education--Queen Caroline--Omission of her Name from the

Liturgy--She rejects the King's Proposals, and arrives in

England--Attempts at a Compromise--The King orders an Inquiry--The

Secret Committee--The Bill of Pains and Penalties--Arrival of

the Queen in the House of Lords--Discussions on the Form of

Procedure--Speeches of Denman and the Attorney-General--Evidence

for the Prosecution--Brougham's Speech--Abandonment of the

Bill--General Rejoicings--Violence of Party Feeling--Popularity

of the Queen--Her Claim to be crowned refused--The Queen's

Attempt to enter the Abbey--Indiscretion of the Act--The

Coronation and the Banquet--The subsequent Scramble--Death

of the Queen--Departure of her Body--The King's Visit to

Ireland--A Royal Oration and its enthusiastic Reception--The

King and Lady Conyngham--Changes in the Government--Discontent

of Eldon--Wellesley in Ireland--Alarming State of the

Country--Canning's Speech on Catholic Emancipation--Parliamentary

Reform--Agricultural Distress and Finance--Eldon's Outbreak on

the Marriage Bill--Suicide of Lord Londonderry--Scene at his

Funeral--Visit of George IV. to Scotland--Loyalty of Sir Walter

Scott--Account of the Festivities--Peel's Letter to Scott--Return

of the King--Canning takes the Foreign Office and Leadership of

the House of Commons--Huskisson joins the Cabinet--The Duke of

Wellington sent to Verona--His Instructions--Principles of the Holy

Alliance--The Spanish Colonies--French Intervention in Spain--The

Duke's Remonstrances with the French King--His Interview with the

Czar--The Congress of Verona--Failure of Wellington to prevent

Intervention in Spain--Vindication of Canning's Policy in the

Commons--He calls the New World into Existence.

George III. expired on the 29th of January, 1820. Although it was

Sunday, both Houses of Parliament met according to the requisition of

the statute, 6 Anne c. 7. Lord Eldon merely appeared on the woolsack;

and, as soon as prayers were read, the House of Peers was adjourned.

The same day a council was held at Carlton House, when the usual

ceremonies were observed, as upon the commencement of a new reign,

although George IV. had been virtually king during the period of the

Regency. On this occasion the Ministers delivered up the emblems of

their different offices, and were all graciously reappointed. Lord

Eldon, in a letter to his daughter, felicitates himself on having

been thus placed "in the very singular situation, that of a third

Chancellorship." But Lord Campbell remarks that he was probably not

aware that one of his predecessors had been Chancellor five times. His

immediate successor had been four times Chancellor, and Lord Cottenham

three times. "It is amusing," says Lord Campbell, "to observe how

he enhances the delight he felt at the commencement of this third

Chancellorship by protestations that he was reluctantly induced again

to accept the worthless bauble, lest, by declining it, he should be

chargeable with ingratitude." The Chancellor made similar protestations

of reluctance and humility when George IV., grateful for his services

in connection with the prosecution of the queen, pressed upon him

accumulated honours; giving him, at the same time, two additional steps

in the peerage, as Viscount Encombe and Earl of Eldon--honours which,

he said, he had repeatedly declined to accept when offered by George

III.

Parliament again met for a few days, but only to vote Addresses of

condolence and congratulation, as a dissolution had been determined

on. The Marquis of Lansdowne pointed out that there was not the usual

reason for a dissolution which occurred upon a demise of the Crown; but

Lord Eldon explained that, at common law, the Parliament died with the

Sovereign in whose name it was called; and although, by the statute

of William III., it could sit six months longer, it was liable to be

dissolved sooner; and constitutionally it ought to be dissolved as

soon as public business would allow; so that noble lords who started

any business to delay the dissolution would be obstructing the due

exercise of the Royal Prerogative. He, as Lord Commissioner, therefore,

concluded the Session by delivering the Royal Speech, which deplored

the loss of a Sovereign, the common father of all his people, and

praised the prudence and firmness with which the Lords and Commons had

counteracted the designs of the disaffected.

The general election was, on the whole, favourable to the Government;

the forces of Conservatism being roused into activity by the violent

democratic tendencies of the times, and by the threats of revolution.

The new Parliament met on the 21st of April. Mr. Manners Sutton was

re-elected Speaker. A week was occupied in swearing in the members,

and the Session was opened on the 27th by a Speech from the king, the

vagueness of which gave no ground for an amendment to the Address in

either House. In the old roll of members one illustrious name was

found, borne by a statesman who was never more to take his seat in

the House. Henry Grattan expired (June 4) soon after the Session

commenced. Sir James Mackintosh, in moving a new writ for Dublin, which

Grattan had represented for many years, observed "that he was, perhaps,

the only man recorded in history who had obtained equal fame and

influence in two assemblies differing from each other in such essential

respects as the English and Irish Parliaments."

[Illustration: GREAT SEAL OF GEORGE IV.]

The Session promised for some weeks to be very dull; no subjects more

stirring being brought forward or announced than the settlement of the

Civil List, the discharge of insolvent debtors, the suppression of

Sunday newspapers, and the reading of the Athanasian Creed. To one of

those subjects, the Civil List, Lord Eldon thus jocosely alluded in

a letter to his daughter:--"Our royal master seems to have got into

temper again, as far as I could judge from his conversation with me

this morning. He has been pretty well disposed to part with us all,

because we would not make additions to his revenue. This we thought

conscientiously we could not do in the present state of the country,

and of the distresses of the middle and lower orders of the people. To

which we might add, too, that of the higher orders."

But there was one subject of general and permanent interest brought

under the notice of the House of Commons. Mr. Henry Brougham made

an important speech on the great and difficult subject of Popular

Education, which he continued to advocate, with so much power and

success, throughout the whole of his lengthened and brilliant career.

He stated that there were then twelve thousand parishes or chapelries

in England; of these three thousand five hundred had not a vestige

of a school, and the people had no more means of education than the

Hottentots or Kaffirs. Of the remainder, there were five thousand

five hundred unendowed, depending entirely on the casual and fleeting

support of the parents of the children attending them. The number

of children receiving education at all the schools, week-day and

Sunday, was seven hundred thousand. Estimating the number educated

at home at fifty thousand, the whole number then under instruction

would be seven hundred and fifty thousand--about one-fifteenth of the

entire population. In Scotland the proportion at that time was about

one-tenth; in Holland and Prussia the same; in Switzerland one-eighth.

France was then at the bottom of the scale, only one-twenty-eighth

of the population being under instruction. Mr. Brougham proposed a

school-rate for England, according to the American plan.

The indisposition of Parliament to attend to the ordinary business of

the legislature, however important and pressing any portion of it might

be considered in other circumstances, may be easily accounted for. One

subject engrossed the minds of all men at this time, and agitated the

nation to a depth and extent altogether unprecedented in our history.

The story of Caroline of Brunswick is one of the saddest and most

romantic in the annals of the Queens of England. When the Prince Regent

became king, his wife, as a matter of course, became the rightful

Queen of England. But her husband had resolved that she should not

be queen; and, rather than not have his way in this, he was ready to

imperil his throne. She was as fully entitled to enjoy the well-defined

rank and position that devolved upon her by the laws of the country,

as he was to wear his crown, without regard to personal character. He

would break the marriage tie, if he could; but, failing that, he was

determined to degrade the queen by bringing against her the foulest

charges of immorality. She might, indeed, have escaped a trial on

these charges if she had consented to remain abroad, and had agreed to

forego any title that would have connected her with the Royal Family

of England. Till the death of George III., who had always been her

steady friend, she had been prayed for in the liturgy as the Princess

of Wales. There was now no Princess of Wales, and the king insisted

that she should not be prayed for at all. His Ministers, against their

own convictions--against what they well knew to be the almost unanimous

feeling of the nation--weakly yielded to the arbitrary will of their

licentious Sovereign. They and their apologists attempted to uphold

this conduct by alleging that she was prayed for under the words,

"the rest of the Royal Family." But Mr. Denman, who defended her,

afterwards observed with more truth that the general prayer in which

she was embraced was, "For all that are desolate and oppressed." The

moment the news of this outrage reached the queen, she resolved, with

characteristic spirit and determination, to come at once to England and

assert her rights in person. The Ministers flattered themselves that

this was a vain boast, and that, conscious of guilt, her courage would

fail her.

On the 3rd of May George received addresses at Carlton House, and on

the 10th he held his first levee since his accession to the Throne, at

which nearly eighteen hundred persons of distinction were present, who

testified their attachment to his person in the most gratifying manner.

The families of the great political party that formed and supported

his Government affected to treat the queen's pretensions with a quiet

disdain that evinced their confidence in the unbounded loyalty of the

nation. But their eyes were soon opened; and in a few weeks Ministers

sat abashed upon the Treasury benches as if conscious that they were

driving the vessel of the Constitution upon a rock, subservient to

the tyranny of their master. The Liberal party were vehement in their

denunciations, and the leading Whigs, whether from policy or a sense of

duty, came forward as the champions of the queen's rights. The people

were all enthusiastic in her favour, and wild with excitement.

On the 1st of June her Majesty arrived at St. Omer, intending to embark

at Calais without delay for England. She wrote a letter to the Prime

Minister, the Earl of Liverpool, commanding him to prepare a palace in

London for her reception; another to Lord Melville, to send a yacht

to carry her across the Channel to Dover; and a third to the Duke of

York, repeating both demands, and complaining of the treatment she had

received. Two days later Lord Hutchinson, with Mr. Brougham, who was

her legal adviser, arrived with a proposition from the king, offering

her fifty thousand pounds a year for life if she would remain on the

Continent, and relinquish her claims as Queen of England. The queen

instantly and indignantly rejected the offer, and started for England

with all haste, having dismissed her foreign suite, including Bergami,

her chamberlain, and the prime cause of the scandal that attached to

her name. She would not even be dissuaded by Mr. Brougham, who most

earnestly implored her to refrain from rushing into certain trouble

and possible danger; or, at least, to delay taking the step until Lord

Hutchinson should have received fresh instructions. She was peremptory,

and sailed at once for Dover, accompanied by Lady Anne Hamilton and

Alderman Wood, landing on the 6th of June. As this event was quite

unexpected by Government, the commandant, having had no orders to the

contrary, received her with a royal salute. The beach was covered

with people, who welcomed her with shouts of enthusiasm. From Dover

to London her journey was a continued ovation. In London the whole

population seemed to turn out in a delirium of joy and triumph, which

reached its climax as the procession passed Carlton House. No residence

having been provided for her by the Government, she proceeded to the

house of Alderman Wood in Audley Street.

The danger of civil war was felt to be so great that earnest attempts

were made to conciliate the queen, and to effect a compromise. Mr.

Wilberforce was very zealous in this matter. He wrote to the king,

entreating him to restore the queen's name to the liturgy. This was a

vital point. The Ministry had expressed their intention to resign if

this must be done. Mr. Wilberforce headed a deputation from the House

of Commons, who proceeded to her residence, in full court costume.

He describes her manner as "extremely dignified, but very stern and

haughty." He got no thanks from either party for his attempts at

negotiation. He was very much abused by Cobbett and other writers

on the popular side. Mr. Brougham and Mr. Denman met the Duke of

Wellington and Lord Castlereagh on the 15th of June to discuss an

adjustment; when it was laid down, as a preliminary, that the queen

must not be understood to admit, nor the king to retract, anything; and

that the questions to be examined were--the future residence of the

queen; her title, when travelling on the Continent; the non-exercise

of certain rights of patronage in England; and the income to be

assigned to her for life. This fourth topic the queen desired might

be altogether laid aside in these conferences; and the differences

which arose upon the first proposition prevented any discussion on the

second and third. They suggested that her Majesty should be officially

introduced by the king's Ministers abroad to foreign Courts, or, at

least, to the Court of some one state which she might select for her

residence; and that her name should be restored to the liturgy, or

something conceded by way of equivalent, the nature of which, however,

was not specified by her negotiators. It was answered that, on the

subject of the liturgy, there could be no change of what had been

resolved; that, with respect to her residence in any foreign state,

the king, although he could not properly require of any foreign Power

to receive at its Court any person not received at the Court of

England, would, however, cause official notification to be made of her

legal character as queen; and that a king's yacht, or a ship of war,

should be provided to convey her to the port she might select. These

conditions were wholly declined by the queen, and on the 19th of June

the negotiations were broken off. On the 22nd two resolutions were

passed by the House of Commons, declaring their opinion that, when such

large advances had been made toward an adjustment, her Majesty, by

yielding to the wishes of the House, and forbearing to press further

the propositions on which a material difference yet remained, would not

be understood as shrinking from inquiry, but only as proving her desire

to acquiesce in the authority of Parliament.