tice of the state of
the civilized world at the fall of Napoleon may be, perhaps, required.

[Sidenote: Remarkable Men of Genius.]

England suffered less than any other of the great powers from the
French Revolution. A great burden was, indeed, entailed on future
generations; but the increase of the national debt was not felt so
long as English manufactures were purchased, to a great extent, by the
Continental States. Six hundred million pounds were added to the
national debt; but England, internally, was never more flourishing
than during this long war of a quarter of a century. And not only was
glory shed around the British throne by the victories of Nelson and
Wellington, and the effectual assistance which England rendered to the
continental powers, and without which the liberties of Europe would
have been subverted, but, during the reign of George III., a splendid
constellation of men of genius, in literature and science, illuminated
the world. Dr. Johnson made moral reflections on human life which will
ever instruct mankind; Burke uttered prophetic oracles which even his
age was not prepared to appreciate; and his rivals thundered in the
senate with an eloquence and power not surpassed by the orators of
antiquity; Gibbon wrote a history which such men as Guizot and Milman
pronounced wonderful both for art and learning; Hume, Reid, and
Stewart, carried metaphysical inquiry to its utmost depth; Gray,
Burns, Goldsmith, Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth, were not
unworthy successors of Dryden and Pope; Adam Smith called into
existence the science of political economy, and nearly brought it to
perfection in a single lifetime; Reynolds and West adorned the
galleries with pictures which would not have disgraced the land of
artists; while scholars, too numerous to mention, astonished the world
by the extent of their erudition; and divines, in language which
rivalled the eloquence of Chrysostom or Bossuet, declared to an
awakened generation the duties and destinies of man.

France, the rival of England, was not probably permanently injured by
the Revolution; for, if millions of lives were sacrificed, and
millions of property were swept away, still important civil and social
privileges were given to the great mass of the people, and odious
feudal laws and customs were broken forever. All the glory which war
can give, was obtained; and France, for twenty years, was feared and
respected. Popular liberty was not secured; bu