world by the wild warlike vigour of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, a tale of warfare on the Scottish Border in the sixteenth century. This was followed up by other metrical romances of Scottish and English chivalry. More perhaps was done by Scott than by any one else to call forth that appreciation of the literature, art, feelings, and manners of the Teutonic and Celtic races which was gradually displacing the exclusive admiration of Greek and Roman antiquity. He turned to prose when he saw that his poetical renown was waning before that of a younger rival. This was George Gordon, Lord Byron, whose first cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, published in 1812, had such immediate success that, as he himself said, he woke one morning and found himself famous. Byron led a wild and unhappy life, and, splendid as his poems are, they are marred by moral faults which increased with his years. In 1824, when only thirty-six years of age, he died at Mesolongi, whither he had gone to fight for the Greek patriots against the Turks. Two years earlier, his friend Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose religious and social opinions had made him so unpopular that he left England, had been drowned in the Mediterranean. Shelley has been called "the Poet of Poets," because his writings, though not suited to ordinary minds, can be appreciated by those who are themselves poets. In prose the most notable works of the time were Scott's Waverley Novels, by which he won a still higher place than that to which he had attained as a poet. The first of the set, Waverley, a tale of the adventures of an English gentleman who joins the Young Chevalier's army, was published anonymously in 1814, and was quickly followed by a host of other novels and romances. Scott's aim was, as he has told us, to do for his own country what Maria Edgeworth had already done for Ireland-" something which might introduce her natives to those of the sister kingdom in a more favourable light than they had been placed hitherto.' Maria Edgeworth, whose Irish characters thus roused the emulation of Scott, was a novelist of repute, but to the present generation she is best known by her books for children. Another novelist, of whom, different as her line was from his own, Scott spoke with generous admiration, was Jane Austen, a Hampshire clergyman's daughter, who represented the quiet uneventful life of the English lesser gentry with exquisite truth and humour. 21. Painting. Nothing has hitherto been said about painting, because England was behindhand in the art, and it was not until the time of the Georges that a native school was formed. The most famous names in the early history of painting in England are those of foreigners. Hans Holbein, whose flattering portrait of Anne of Cleves had a share in leading Henry VIII. to send for her as his bride, was a German. Sir Anthony Vandyck, the great artist who has preserved for us the features of Charles I. and his nobles, was a native of Antwerp. The Vandeveldes, father and son, both noted sea-painters, belonged to Holland, from which country the elder one was invited by Charles II. Sir Peter Lely and Sir Godfrey Kneller, the first of whom portrayed the beauties of the court of Charles II., the other, those of the court of William III., were Germans. There were indeed some good native painters, such as William Dobson, who has been called the English Vandyck; Robert Walker, who painted Cromwell and most of his officers; and Samuel Cooper, a fine miniature-painter of the days of the Commonwealth and Charles II. But after these, portraiture, and indeed all branches of painting, went down, until the rise of William Hogarth, who flourished under George II. He was the son-in-law of Sir James Thornhill, a painter much in request during the reigns of Anne and George I. for the decoration of palaces and public buildings, whose best works adorn the dome of St. Paul's and the hall of Greenwich Hospital. Hogarth struck out a style of his own, painting satirical scenes, sometimes humorous, sometimes gloomy and tragic; and his pictures, drawn from the life of all classes, are records of the costume and the manners of his age. In 1768, four years after Hogarth's death, was founded the Royal Academy, of which Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great portrait-painter of England, was the first president. Reynolds is accounted the founder of the English School of painting. Other noted artists of the time are Richard Wilson, a painter of landscape, and Thomas Gainsborough, of landscape and portraits. Among the many pictures of Benjamin West, who was born in Pennsylvania, then a British colony, and who became the favourite artist of George III., one of the most celebrated is the Death of General Wolfe. In this, instead of representing the figures in ancient Greek or Roman costume, as was then the fashion with painters, West had the good sense to depict them in dresses such as they actually wore. The successor, though not the equal, of Reynolds in portraiture was Sir Thomas Lawrence, who from the early part of the nineteenth century until his death in 1830, possessed the public favour.` Sir David Wilkie, a Scotsman, drew admirable scenes of village and farmhouse life; and the great landscape painter Joseph Mallord William Turner was in the middle of his career at the end of the reign of George III. Turner, though he afterwards gave his attention chiefly to oil painting, began as a watercolour painter; indeed the English School of watercolour painting owes its origin to him and his friend and fellow-student Thomas Girtin, who formed for themselves a new method and style in this art. Among water-colourists, Samuel Prout, who died in 1852, excelled in delineating medieval architecture and the streets and market-places of foreign towns, while David Cox is especially famed for stormy landscape scenes. Thomas Bewick, a Northumbrian, is famous as the reviver of wood engraving, and his beautiful prints of beasts, birds, and rural scenes were designed as well as executed by himself. John Flaxman, who died in 1826, is considered the greatest of English sculptors. CHAPTER XLII. GEORGE IV. George IV.; Cato Street Conspiracy (1)—Queen Caroline (2)-foreign affairs; battle of Navarino (3)-Free trade (4)"Catholic Emancipation" (5)-death of George IV.; Metropolitan Police Force; Burmese War (6). I. George IV., 1820-1830.-Within a month after the accession of the Prince Regent as George IV., discovery was made of a plot for assassinating the King's ministers at a Cabinet dinner. The meeting-place of the conspirators was a loft in Cato Street in London, and their ringleader was one Arthur Thistlewood, whose object, so he averred, was to revenge the "Manchester Massacre." Being convicted of treason, Thistlewood and four accomplices were hanged. 2. Queen Caroline. In 1795, George, under pressure from his father, and tempted by the prospect of payment of his debts, had married his cousin, Caroline, Princess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, an indiscreet and coarse-mannered woman, from whom he soon separated. Not long after his accession, a Bill of Pains and Penalties was brought into Parliament by the ministry to degrade and divorce the Queen on charges of misconduct. After an examination of witnesses before the House of Lords, the bill was finally dropped, to the delight of the populace, who were all on the Queen's side, believing her to have But the King was been wronged and persecuted. still determined to resist her claim to be crowned as his consort, and in this he was supported by the Privy Council. The Queen, attempting at least to be present at her husband's coronation, appeared early on the morning of the ceremony before the doors of Westminster Abbey, but was everywhere refused admission. Not long after this numiliation she fell sick, and died August 7, 1821. 3. Foreign Affairs.-Although in France the old line of Kings had been restored, the work of the French Revolution was far from being undone. The French doctrines of "liberty, equality, and fraternity” had taught oppressed or dissatisfied men of all countries to draw together as one party; and therefore princes and all in authority became disposed to make common cause against the malcontent. So long as the war lasted, Great Britain was of necessity the close friend of the old governments of the Continent; but after the peace her foreign policy began to diverge from that of her allies, the Emperors of Austria and Russia and the King of Prussia. These, having joined together in the "Holy Alliance," made themselves the opponents of revolution, and of reform won by revolution, throughout Europe; while England would not undertake to interfere in the internal affairs of other states. The "Holy Alliance" was so named because the three sovereigns had put forth a declaration that they would be guided solely by the precepts of the Christian religion; but among "Liberals,"-as those who sympathized with insurrection abroad, or wished for changes at home, had begun to call themselves—it became a byword for a league of tyrants. The alteration in the foreign policy of Great Britain was mainly brought about by George Canning, who in 1822 became Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. When the Spanish colonies in South America had separated themselves from Spain, Canning prevailed on the British Government to |