And yet the reign of the fourth George as king was marked by returning national prosperity,—­owing not to the efforts of statesmen and legislators, but to the marvellous spread of commerce and manufactures, resulting from the establishment of peace, thus opening a market for British goods in all parts of the world.

This period of the fourth George’s rule, as regent and king, was also remarkable for the appearance of men of genius in all departments of human thought and action.  As the lights of a former generation sank beneath the horizon, other stars arose of increased brilliancy.  In poetry alone, Byron, Scott, Rogers, Coleridge, Southey, Wordsworth, Moore, Campbell, Keats, would have made the age illustrious,—­a constellation such as has not since appeared.  In fiction, Sir Walter Scott introduced a new era, soon followed by Bulwer, Dickens, and Thackeray.  In the law there were Brougham, Eldon, Lyndhurst, Ellenborough, Denman, Plunkett, Erskine, Wetherell,—­all men of the first class.  In medicine and surgery were Abernethy, Cooper, Holland.  In the Church were Parr, Clarke, Hampden, Scott, Sumner, Hall, Arnold, Irving, Chalmers, Heber, Whately, Newman.  Sir Humphry Davy was presiding at the Royal Society, and Sir Thomas Lawrence at the Royal Academy.  Herschel was discovering planets.  Bell was lecturing at the new London University, and Dugald Stewart in the University of Edinburgh.  Captain Ross was exploring the Northern Seas, and Lander the wilds of Africa.  Lancaster was founding a new system of education; Bentham and Ricardo were unravelling the tangled web of political economy; Hallam, Lingard, Mitford, Mills, were writing history; Macaulay, Carlyle, Smith, Lockhart, Jeffrey, Hazlitt, were giving a new stimulus to periodical literature; while Miss Edgeworth, Jane Porter, Mrs. Hemans, were entering the field of literature as critics, poets, and novelists, instead of putting their inspired thoughts into letters, as bright women did one hundred years before.  Into everything there were found some to cast their searching glances, creating an intellectual activity without previous precedent, if we except the great theological discussions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  Even shopkeepers began to read and think, and in their dingy quarters were stirred to discuss their rights; while William Cobbett aroused a still lower class to political activity by his matchless style.  All philanthropic, educational, and religious movements received a wonderful stimulus; while improvements in the use of steam, mechanical inventions, chemical developments and scientific discoveries, were rapidly changing the whole material condition of mankind.

In 1820, when the regent became George IV., a new era opened in English history, most observable in those popular agitations which ushered in reforms under his successor William IV.  These it will be my object to present in another volume.

AUTHORITIES.