his territory being guaranteed by the five great Powers to this most sagacious and discreet of sovereigns. In 1832, king Leopold married the eldest daughter of the king of the French. Louis Philippe's reign had not been exempted from solicitudes, during the six years that he had been king. The license of the press, and the occasional hostility of the Chambers, produced a counter-disposition on the part of the king to struggle against what he believed to be the evils of the representative system. From October, 1832, to September, 1836, there had been nine changes of ministry. During these changes, and the consequent excitement of parliamentary conflicts, there had been more than one conspiracy of which the great object was to assassinate the king. In 1836, an attempt to overthrow the government was made by a young man of twenty-five, who relied only upon his name, his abilities, and his daring. When, by the death in 1832 of the duke of Reichstadt, the son of the emperor Napoleon, Charles Louis Napoleon, the youngest son of Louis Bonaparte, became, according to a decree of 1804, heir to the throne, the natural course of his ambition was to assert his claim against one whom he regarded as a usurper. Early in the morning of the 30th of October, Louis Napoleon, having the support of a colonel who commanded a battalion at Strasbourg, presented himself at the barrack of a regiment of artillery, and was received with shouts of "Long live the Emperor." At another barrack the attempts of the prince upon the fidelity of the troops was repulsed; and he and his followers were arrested by the colonel and other officers of the forty-sixth regiment of infantry. The affair was over in a few hours without bloodshed. An imperfect telegraphic despatch received in Paris on the 31st, had thrown the Court and the ministers into the most painful suspense, before the real result of this rash enterprise was known. Louis Philippe and his Cabinet came to the resolution of not bringing prince Louis to trial, but of sending him to the United States of America, where he remained till October, 1887, when he encountered the risks of a return to Europe to be with his mother at her death. After that event he took up his abode in England, where he was generally regarded merely as a man of pleasure, not possessing any force of character that would justify a lofty ambition, although he had previously become known in Europe as a writer of diligent research and unquestionable ability.

On Tuesday the 20th of June, 1837, king William the Fourth expired, after several weeks' suffering, from an affection of the chest. The most eminent men of the State bore testimony in parliament to the public virtues of the late king,-to his patriotism, his love of justice, his rare candour, his devotion to business, his amiable disposition, his entire freedom from all vindictive feelings. His abrupt dismissal of the ministry of Lord Melbourne was the only slip in the prudent course of the constitutional government of the sailor-king.

A.D. 1837-1842.

CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE.

873

CHAPTER LXIV.

FOUR years after the crown passed from William the Fourth to his niece the entire population of England, Wales, and Scotland, was estimated at nearly nineteen millions, of whom nearly eight millions, male and female, were distinctly classified by their occupations. The wonderful variety of stations and pursuits exhibited in this classification constitutes the distinctive character of modern British civilization. A very large proportion of the three millions of the people who were engaged in commerce, trade, and manufacture were necessarily to be found in the cities and towns. Since the commencement of the Regency, the population of sixy-eight of the principal towns of England and Scotland had increased 100 per cent., the aggregate population having increased only 54 per cent. One of the most curious social problems at the period of the queen's accession was the apparent difficulty of feeding the population of London,-nearly two millions of human beings, collected together in places more or less densely peopled, comprised within a circle whose radius was four miles from St. Paul's. This difficulty vanishes under the self-regulating movements of the present social organization. The distribution of the food of London is accomplished more by the agency of shop-keepers than by the stall-sellers at markets. The costardmonger, who derived his name from the apple which he sold, had in 1837 almost wholly passed away from the busy streets into the suburbs. The orange-woman standing on the pavement with her basket had nearly ceased to traffic. The public places of refreshment were not essentially different from those of the beginning of the century as far as regarded the chop-house and the eating-house. But the institution of Clubs had materially contributed to the luxurious comforts of the higher classes, and two thousand Coffee-houses had sprung up in London, where the artizan could obtain his cup of tea or coffee for three half-pence or twopence and read the newspapers and periodical works. The increase in the means of communication had at this period largely increased the certainty of the supply of food, both as to its abundance and the time occupied in its transit. But valuable to every class of the London population as was the consequent partial cheapening of some of the necessaries of life, the physical and moral condition of the great bulk of the people would have been little improved as long as the public health was utterly neglected. Three years before Victoria became our sovereign, attention was roused, in some degree, to this question by a distinguished architect, Mr. Sydney Smirke. The year after her Majesty's accession a laborious investigation into the health of the metropolis, instituted under the authority of the Poor Law Commissioners, made a startling revelation of the details of the mass of vice, misery, and disease, which existed in close contiguity with the most opulent parts of the great city. There was then no public provision in London, nor as far as we know in any of the provincial towns, for promoting cleanliness amongst the poor by the establishment of Public Baths and Washhouses. In the poorer districts of London, and in nearly every city and town of Great Britain, the

supplies of water were wholly inadequate to preserve the cleanliness and consequent health of the labouring population. The first step in this direction was made by a poor woman named Catherine Wilkinson, in 1832, when the cholera first appeared in England. Her plan was matured in Liverpool in 1846, in a large establishment, to the superintendence of which she and her husband were appointed. A public bath may now be procured in London for twopence. Equally injurious to health as an insufficient supply of pure water was the prevailing custom twenty years ago of burying the dead in towns. In 1832 an Act was passed for the formation of a cemetery at Kensal Green. The cemeteries of Norwood and Highgate were added some eight or ten years later, but all these were for the opulent. The parish graveyards still continued open in their constantly increasing abomination.

Many of the evils of the factory system, which had grown up in the rapid development of the powers of the steam-engine, had begun to be remedied by legislative interference. Independently of the unwholesome dwellings in which many of the factory operatives were compelled to abide, their health was better cared for, during their hours of labour, than in the miserable workshops in which too many artizans then earned their bread. The report of a Commission appointed in 1840 to inquire into the employ ment of the children of the poorer classes in mines and collieries, exhibited in some mining districts a state of things, with regard not only to children but to women, which could scarcely be paralleled by any of the barbarous practices which have contributed to make negro slavery so abhorrent to the feelings of the people of England. Two years later a Bill, brought in by lord Ashley, for restraining the employment of women and children in mines and collieries was passed, after considerable debate, in both Houses of Parliament. The greatest evil of the early employment of children of both sexes in agricultural labour was to be found in their removal from school before they had acquired the commonest rudiments of knowledge. The employment of women was injurious in their being withdrawn from the proper superintendence of their families. The total number of agricultural labourers in Great Britain in 1841 was a little above one million one hundred and thirty-eight thousand, of which number fifty-six thousand were females. Since 1811 the proportion of the agricultural to the commercial and miscellaneous classes of the people had been gradually diminishing. The amended Poor Law had been in operation for three years, when a Parliamentary Inquiry was instituted upon complaints of its administration. In 1837 the labourers, who in 1834 had manifested a lawless spirit of opposition to the new law, had become aware that its intention was to raise them to a better condition instead of grinding them down. Undoubtedly there was individual suffering in the transition from the allowance system to the stern refusal of aid to the able-bodied labourer, and the time was yet distant when what was wanting in the New Poor Law towards placing the agricultural labourer in his proper relation to the whole social system would be supplied by a feeling of brotherhood between the rich and the poor.

In 1836 a Commission was appointed to inquire as to the best means of establishing an efficient Constabulary Force in the counties of England.

A.D. 1837-1842.

EDUCATION AND LITERATURE.

875

The criminal population of London, and of a few of the larger towns, had been kept within narrower bounds than in the time of George the Fourth, by the establishment of a vigilant Police Force. In the rural districts there was no power but that of the parish constable to prevent the most extensive system of depredation. Crimes of violence were gradually decreasing, though crimes characterized by fraud were increasing in a still greater proportion. The altered character of criminal punishments, as exhibited in the increase of the sentences of minor punishments, and the decrease of those of death and transportation, after the accession of the queen, is very remarkable. The records of summary convictions from 1838 to 1842 exhibited a frightful amount of juvenile delinquency. There was a district lying near Westminster Abbey, which was called "The Devil's Acre" from the universal depravity. A Scotch gardener, Andrew Walker, attempted to weed the Devil's Acre; and in 1839 set up a school, in a stable, for reclaiming and instructing the wretched children who swarmed around him. This was the beginning of "Ragged Schools" in London. Bristol was the first great town in which such an institution was organized.

Up to the period of the accession of queen Victoria the government had scarcely considered it a part of its duty to interfere with the course of private benevolence in rendering assistance to the general education of the people. In 1834 and the three following years, however, grants were made by Parliament for assisting in building schoolhouses. During those four years a sum, double to that contributed by Parliament, had been supplied by the private funds of individuals towards the erection of schools. In February, 1839, the government first constituted a Board of Education, consisting of five Privy Councillors, with the President of the Council as the head of the Board, which was especially charged with the formation of Normal Schools. The government persevered in its plan, despite all opposition. However little encouraged by the State, popular education had been making progress in England. It was found in 1833 that during fifteen years the day-scholars had more than doubled, and the Sunday scholars were three times as many. In thirty years, ending with 1841, there had been above thirteen thousand schools established, of which five thousand four hundred were Public Schools, and eight thousand seven hundred Private Schools. The increase of Public Schools in the last ten of these years had been equal to the total increase in the three decennial periods from 1801 to 1831. This increase of schools had produced very little visible effect upon those growing into young men and women. In 1838, the conclusion was come to that, speaking roughly, it might be safely asserted that less than one-half of the adult population of England could write, and that less than three-fourths could read. In 1825 Constable's Miscellany led the way in the combination of superior literature with comparative cheapness. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge originated with Mr. Brougham in 1826. The modern epoch of Cheap Literature was commencing. During the Reform period of 1832, two unexciting miscellanies sprang up-Chambers's Edinburgh Journal in Scotland, and the Penny Maga zine in England. The sale of these two little instruments for calming political agitation offered a proof of the vast increase of the desire for knowledge. It has been expressively said, "All Literature is more or less both an effect

and a cause, both a product and a power. It both follows and leads. It takes an impulse from its age, and it also gives an impulse to its age.” After the outburst of fiery writing produced by the French Revolution, English literature became for the most part Conservative. After the agitation of Parliamentary Reform had come to an end, writers as well as statesmen became tolerant and compromising. One principal cause of this approach towards forbearance, if not to union, was the general spread of intelligence. M. Guizot, who came as ambassador to England in 1840, says, "Take it all in all, civilization and liberty have in England, during the course of the nineteenth century, turned to the profit of good rather than of evil. Religious faith, Christian charity, philanthropic benevolence, the intelligent and indefatigable activity of the higher classes, and good sense spread amongst all classes, have battled and now battle effectually, against the vices of society and the evil inclinations of human nature." The rapid increase in the number of readers may be estimated from the fact that, even with a general reduction of price, the annual returns of publishing were certainly doubled in 1850, as compared with 1825. The severe moralist might say then, as he may say now, that in proportion as the number of readers had increased, the desire of the mass of the population had been rather for passing amusement than solid instruction. The people of this country were labouring harder than any other people, and it could not, therefore, be expected that much of the reading of all classes should have been other than for amusement. But the prose fiction of our age has accomplished higher ends than the supply of mere amusement. About the beginning of the reign of William the Fourth an endeavour was made to teach political economy through fiction. Miss Martineau's little tales, entitled "Illustra tions of Political Economy," met with complete success, and they have, in a considerable degree, led the way in the growing tendency of novelwriting to bring all classes nearer to each other in the exposition of a common humanity prescribing a common brotherhood. This is the great benefit to our age which has been accomplished by Charles Dickens; by illustrious females such as Elizabeth Gaskell; by a band of manly thinkers, of whom Charles Kingsley is the type. Whether with or without a high purpose, never were novelists so numerous; never were the works of the enduring ones so voluminous. We can do no more than indicate even such enduring names as Bulwer Lytton, Dickens, Thackeray, or such voluminous writers as James, Marryat, Ainsworth. Amongst female writers who have taken rank are Charlotte Bronté, who first awakened the world to an ap preciation of her remarkable genius in 1847, and the authoress of Adam Bede, who has succeeded to the elevated seat from which Miss Bronté was so prematurely removed.

Of the Poets, equally with the novelists, of the Victorian age, it may be said that their name is legion. The two great poets who came early in the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, to fill up the void when Byron, and Keats, and Shelley had passed away, were Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning. To the name of Browning a double immortality was given by his marriage with as true a poet as himself-Elizabeth Barrett. Of lesser

* G. L. Craik, "English Literature and Language."