with the aid of Mr. Brougham, in the year 1823, the London Mechanics' Institute; and in the next year laid the foundation of the edifice in Southampton-buildings. In a short time, nearly all the large towns had each a Mechanics' Institute; then similar societies were established in the smaller towns; and within five or six years, these institutions might be counted by the hundred. It was simultaneously discovered that there was a great deficiency of books for the people; and, in 1825, Mr. Brougham, Lord John Russell, Dr. Lushington, William Allen, and others, formed the "Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge," with which originated the "Penny Magazine," and other pioneers of cheap and wholesome literature. Another achievement was, the institution of the London University, for the education of young men of the middle classes and of the Dissenting communities, excluded from the great national schools. It was an indirect advantage of each of these three efforts in one direction, that they stimulated a corresponding, though rival exertion, among others, with whom anxiety for the diffusion of knowledge was tempered with solicitude for its being intermingled with certain moral influences. We may mention, in this connexion, the institution of Musical Festivals, at York, Norwich, Birmingham, and Worcester; the commencement of that awakening of musical taste in the English people, which is almost equal to the creation of a new faculty, and which certainly has carried to thousands of homes delight unfelt by the families of prior generations.

There was a conspicuous group of men and women in these times inspired by that principle of commingled fraternity and compassion to which we give the name of philanthropy-William Allen, Robert Owen, and Elizabeth Fry. Allen and Owen were for many years partners in every scheme of beneficence; but Robert Owen added to them a project which went to the radical reconstruction of society, though it was not then encumbered by the odium theologicum to which it has since become obnoxious. Employment and education on principles more in harmony with the laws of our nature than those which had hitherto obtained, were the objects of his scheme; he devoted his own fortune to an experiment of the kind in Lanarkshire, and he inspired sufficient confidence in the wealthy and philanthropric to have placed at his disposal very large sums. Mrs. Fry was less speculative, and more immediately successful. A female Howard, she investigated personally, with infinite courage and self-denial, the condition of our prisons; exciting an interest among rulers and legislators in the improvement of their condition; and softening the hearts of the most hardened by the winning pathos and guileless wisdom of her speech.-But those are not the only philanthropists who give up their fortunes to works of mercy and schemes of human amendment; there is another class of benefactors, who make their ordinary avocations means of benefit to their race.

Thus Pestalozzi, the director of a Swiss Orphan Institution, released the youth of England for ever from the old, self-defeating system of teaching, by which an undigested mass of facts was forced into the mind, instead of its faculties being drawn forth, and directed on what to lay hold. Meanwhile, Dr. and Mrs. Ellis, the first superintendents of Hanwell Asylum, were developing a new method of managing the insane, whereby chains, whips, dungeons, and all the barbarous apparatus by which the loss of reason was treated worse than a crime, and its recovery rendered impossible, were displaced by a system of freedom, gentleness, and industry. Another good work was going forward at Edinburgh, where a committee of University Professors were engaged, in 1820, in watching the efficacy of Mr. Gall's invention for teaching the blind to read. And lastly -lastly, that is, as to our space for enumeration-there was Dr. Watson concluding his forty-five years' labour of teaching the deaf and dumb something like an articulate speech.-There had been, no doubt, in prior ages, men and women as wise and good as these; but the world did not then know its benefactors; they laboured in obscurity, and without mutual knowledge; they were repaid often with persecution, because misunderstood; but now, the arts of peace were found to include the whole circle of human necessities and sufferings, and there was not an outcast left uncom passionated, not a disease without an attempted remedy.

There was one thing the age had not attained to-namely, the conviction that it is best as well as just, to leave matters of opinion to adjust themselves. We have had frequent occasion to advert to political prosecutions for sedition-we must here mention that almost as numerous were indictments for blasphemy or irreligious publications. Sometimes this ignorant, impolitic, and unholy zeal took a ludicrous, sometimes a virulent form. Thus, in 1822, when Mr. Murray, Lord Byron's publisher, applied to the Court of Chancery for an instruction to restrain printers from pirating his "Cain," the application was refused, because the poem contained what the Lord Chancellor deemed blasphemous matter; the withholding of the injunction tending, nevertheless, to promote the sale of the work. What was still worse, a similar application from the publisher of a physiological work by Mr. Lawrence, the eminent surgeon, was refused, on the ground that the work favoured the doctrine of materialism. In 1823, Miss Susanna Wright was punished for a libel on the Christian religion, by eighteen months' imprisonment, and a fine of £100. And in the next year eight shopmen of the infidel bookseller and writer, Carlile, were condemned to fine and imprisonment for having sold Paine's " Age of Reason," and other "irreligious" works. The natural but unfortunate effect was, that numbers associated the religion thus defended with the acts done in its name; but others, better informed, or more deeply reflective, asked whether Chris

tianity were not more libelled by the judge on the bench than by the prisoner at the bar.

Art, literature, and philosophy, gave and received lustre from a multitude of names. Kemble and Kean divided the empire of the stage, and Sontag drew away the whole fashionable world in a time of the most intense political excitement to listen to her warblings. West, an American by birth, but President of our Royal Academy of Painting-Fuseli, the eccentric, but gifted artist, who found congeniality to his intellect in subjects of preternatural horror-Nollekens, who stooped his genius as a sculptor to an end for which genius rarely cares, the accumulation of money-Flaxman, whose works and life were alike beautiful, classic, sacred-William Sharp, the first of line engravers, and to whom we owe whatever educational value there may be in the profuse illustrations of our own day-Sir Thomas Lawrence, turned from works of high promise and ambition, to paint half the aristocracy of England, and all the royalty of Europe-these all died within a few years of each other. Among the patrons of art should be mentioned, Mr. Angerstein, whose collection of pictures Government bought for £57,000, as the nucleus of the National Gallery; Sir George Beaumont, who presented a number of valuable paintings to that collection; and Mr. Payne Knight, who bequeathed a collection of models and drawings worth £30,000 to the British Museum.-In a group of octogenarians, we observe Herschel, the great astronomer-Sir Joseph Banks, the eminent naturalist, companion of the circumnavigator Cooke-and Arthur Young, the father of scientific agriculture, and the highest statistical authority for more than half a century. We have another illustrious triumvirate in Dr. Wollaston, Dr.Thomas Young, and Sir Humphery Davy. Among what we may call the preceptive literati, we catch sight of Mrs. Barbauld, venerable for age and servicesMiss Jane Taylor, a name familiar and beloved in every religious household -Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Lindley Murray, and Hamilton. High upon the seats of fame and authority, we see Sir Walter Scott, Jeffrey of the Edinburgh," and Gifford of the "Quarterly." Coleridge had subsided into the wondrous talker, Wordsworth was biding his time for appreciation, and Southey working hard on prose, as the public did not rate highly enough his poetry. Keats perished in 1821, like an opening flower, rich in present and richer in promised beauty-Byron closed his feverish career in 1826, in the Greek camp-Shelley suffered shortly afterwards the fate he had prefigured in his Alastor. Heber and Pollok began and ended their too brief course.-Nor must we forget the great preachers of the time-Hall, Chalmers, and Irving. While the first-named continued to the close of his painful life to attract to the Dissenting pulpit unwonted respect, and to retain unmeasured admiration for his personal qualifications, Chalmers was beginning to exercise upon the educated youth of Scotland,

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as subsequently upon the whole public, a powerful influence on behalf of what is known as Evangelical Christianity. Irving was later in his appearance, but the effect he produced is among the memorabilia of the age and the phenomena of mental science. Turned by the friendship of Chalmers from going to America because unsuccessful in Scotland, he became the minister of a decayed Scottish congregation in Hatton-garden, and soon attracted thither all the intellect and fashion of London. Mackintosh and Brougham first heard him, they took Canning, and the world followed, wondering at his almost unearthly eloquence and prophetic energy. A spacious and splendid church was built for him in Regent-square, but before it was finished earnestness had become fanaticism, or eccentricity madness; and he fell into neglect from the great, and ridicule by the wits. He left the Scotch communion, but with an immense personal following, and founded a sect which survives to this day. He died in 1834, in comparative obscurity some deeming him crazed by religious phrensy, some broken-hearted by disappointment, but all who knew him saying with Thomas Carlyle-" One of the noblest natures; a man of antique heroic nature, in questionable modern garniture, which he could not wear-the freest, brotherliest, bravest, human soul mine ever came in contact with." Of another order of mind, but a good and great man, was Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, then rising in another quarter, and exerting an influence on the sons of the Church and the nobility which was sorely needed. A Liberal Churchman-liberal in theology, politics, literature-may be to some an anomaly; Arnold was anomalous, however viewed-but he was a great necessity; a benignant, guiding star in a firmament whose lights were either dim or false. If the religious element of that age seemed almost to be dissipated in the unseemly struggles of sects to change their political relations or increase their numbers, it was not altogether impotent for better ends; and we shall see it, in the freer time on which we are about to enter, impelling to higher activities, leaguing with every power for good-the largest and brightest of the streams that are for the purifying and progression of nations.

PERIOD THE THIRD.-1830 To 1850.

CHAPTER I.

THE SAILOR KING-THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1831-ITS EFFECTS ON THE ENGLISH PEOPLE AND THE GENERAL ELECTION-DEATH OF MR. HUSKISSON-THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON'S ANTI-REFORM DECLARATION, AND DOWNFALL OF HIS MINISTRY-THE NEW MEN-THE REFORM BILL-ITS RECEPTION BY THE COMMONS AND THE PEOPLE-THE HASTY DISSOLUTION-GENERAL ELECTIONREFORM BILL RE-INTRODUCED, CARRIED BY THE COMMONS, AND THROWN OUT BY THE BISHOPSPUBLIC EXCITEMENT-NOTTINGHAM AND BRISTOL RIOTS-PROCLAMATION AGAINST THE UNIONSTHE BILL AGAIN CARRIED THROUGH THE COMMONS-MINISTERIAL SUCCESS AND DEFEAT IN THE LORDS THE WELLINGTON AND LYNDHURST INTERREGNUM-INTENSE EXCITEMENT THROUGHOUT THE THREE KINGDOMS-MINISTERS RECALLED-THE PEERS GIVE WAY-THE BILL BECOMES LAW.

THE new King, William the Fourth, ascended the vacant throne of his brother under some happy auspices. He enjoyed a reputation for a frank good-nature, the popular characteristic of the naval profession, which he had followed; and he and his people were mutually pleased with the soubriquet of "the Sailor King." A few years before, he had been all but dismissed from the office of Lord High Admiral by the imperious Premier; and the open-hearted, but rather uncourtly monarch, took the first opportunity of proposing in company the health of the Duke of Wellington, assuring him and the guests that there was no ill-feeling between them, as had been represented; and, some time after, he shocked Lord Eldon by beginning an apology to his lordship for having spoken harshly of him in the Catholic debates. He retained his brother's Ministers, but it was believed that his tendencies were strongly liberal. It was accounted a remarkable omission in his first message to Parliament, that no mention was made of the appointment of a regency in case of his death; for he was now sixty-six years old, and his niece, the Princess Victoria, Heiress Presumptive, but eleven. Both Houses intimated, as delicately as might be, their sense of the neglect; but they were assured that his Majesty was in good health, and Parliament was at once dissolved—according to custom on a change of sovereigns.

Another king was just landing on these shores under very different circumstances the deposed and exiled Charles the Tenth. The first act of Prince Polignac's Ministry was the futile prosecution of M. Bertin, editor of the "Journal des Débats," for whose acquittal the high-minded judges were insulted by the King and Court, but greatly honoured by the people. The harvest of 1829 was deficient, trade was depressed, and the winter was severe; all tending to exacerbate the country and embarrass the Govern