nd Smollett. Differing as
their works do in character, they have the common merit of presenting in
indelible lines a picture of the time in its social aspects. It may have
been, as Stuart Mill asserts, an age of strong men, but it was an age of
coarse vices, an age wanting in the refinements and graces of life; an
age of cruel punishments, cruel sports, and of a political corruption
extending through all the departments of the State.

But it would be a narrow view of the age to dwell wholly on its gloomier
features, which are always the easiest to detect. If the period under
consideration had prominent vices, it had also distinguished merits.
Under Queen Anne and her immediate successors, home-keeping Englishmen
had more space to breathe in than they have now, and trade was not
demoralized by excessive competition. No attempt was made to separate
class from class, and population was not large enough to make the battle
of life almost hopeless in the lowest section of the community. If there
was less refinement than among ourselves, there was far less of nervous
susceptibility, and the country was free from the half-educated class of
men and women who know enough to make them dissatisfied, without
attaining to the larger knowledge which yields wisdom and content. To
say that the age was better than our own would be to deny a thousand
signs of material and intellectual progress, but it had fewer dangers to
contend with, and if there was far less of wealth in the country the
people were probably more satisfied with their lot.[10]

To glance at the century as a whole does not fall within my province,
but I may be permitted to observe that in the course of it science and
invention made rapid strides; that under the inspiring sway of Handel
the power of music was felt as it was never felt before; that in the
latter half of the period the Novel, destined to be one of the noblest
fruits of our imaginative literature, attained a robust life in the
hands of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett; and that, with Reynolds and
Gainsborough, with Romney and Wilson, a glorious school of landscape and
portrait painters arose, which is still the pride of England. It will
be remembered, too, that many of the great charitable institutions which
make our own age illustrious, had their birth in the last. The military
genius of England was displayed in Marlborough and in Clive, her mercy
in John Howard, her spirit of enterprise in Cook, her self-