norant and brutal. The wages of laborers only
averaged four shillings a week, while those of mechanics were not
equal to what some ordinarily earn, in this country and in these
times, in a single day. Both peasants, and artisans were not only ill
paid, but ill used, and they died, miserably and prematurely, from
famine and disease. Nor did sympathy exist for the misfortunes of the
poor. There were no institutions of public philanthropy. Jails were
unvisited by the ministers of mercy, and the abodes of poverty were
left by a careless generation to be dens of infamy and crime. Such was
England two hundred years ago; and there is no delusion more
unwarranted by sober facts than that which supposes that those former
times were better than our own, in any thing which abridges the labors
or alleviates the miseries of mankind. "It is now the fashion to place
the golden age of England in times when noblemen were destitute of
comforts the want of which would be intolerable to a modern footman;
when farmers and shopkeepers breakfasted on loaves the very sight of
which would raise a riot in a modern workhouse, when men died faster
in the purest country air than they now die in the most pestilential
lanes of our towns; and when men died faster in the lanes of our towns
than they now die on the coast of Guinea. But we too shall, in our
turn, be outstripped, and, in our turn, envied. There is constant
improvement, as there also is constant discontent; and future
generations may talk of the reign of Queen Victoria as a time when
England was truly merry England, when all classes were bound together
by brotherly sympathy, when the rich did not grind the faces of the
poor, and when the poor did not envy the splendor of the rich."

* * * * *

REFERENCES.--Of all the works which have yet appeared,
respecting this interesting epoch, the new History of
Macaulay is the most brilliant and instructive. Indeed, the
student scarcely needs any other history, in spite of
Macaulay's Whig doctrines. He may sacrifice something to
effect; and he may give us pictures, instead of philosophy;
but, nevertheless, his book has transcendent merit, and will
be read, by all classes, so long as English history is
prized. Mackintosh's fragment, on the same period, is more
philosophical, and possesses very great merits. Lingard's
History is very valuable on this reign, and shou