mmerce, trade, and finance. During this
period, also, Sir William Blackstone became prominent as a writer on
law, and Edmund Burke, the distinguished orator and statesman, wrote
his "Reflections on the French Revolution."

The poets, Burns, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, with Sheridan, the orator
and dramatist, and Sterne, the humorist, belong to this reign; so,
too, does the witty satirist, Sydney Smith, and Sir Walter Scott,
whose works, like those of Shakespeare, have "made the dead past live
again." Then again, Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen have left
admirable pictures of the age in their stories of Irish and English
life. Coleridge and Wordsworth began to attract attention toward the
last of this period, and to be much read by those who loved the poetry
of thought and the poetry of nature; while, early in the next reign,
Charles Lamb published his delightful "Essays of Elia."

In art we have the first English painters and engravers. Hogarth, who
died a few years after the beginning of the reign, was celebrated for
the coarse but perfect representations of low life and street scenes;
and his series of Election pictures with his "Beer Lane" and "Gin
Alley" are valuable for the insight into the history of the times.

The chief portrait painters were Reynolds, Lawrence, and Gainsborough,
the last of whom afterwards became noted for his landscapes. They
were followed by Wilkie, whose pictures of "The Rent Day," "The
Reading of the Will," and many others, tell a story of interest to
every one who looks at them.

Last came Turner, who in some respects surpassed all former artists in
his power of reproducing scenes in nature. At the same time, Bewick,
whose cuts used to be the delight of every child that read "Aesop's
Fables," gave a new impulse to wood engraving, while Flaxman rose to
be the leading English sculptor, and Wedgwood introduced useful and
beautiful articles of pottery.

In common-school education little advance had been made for many
generations. In the country the great mass of the people were nearly
as ignorant as they were in the darkest part of the Middle Ages.
Hardly a peasant over forty years of age could be found who could read
a verse in the Bible, and not one in ten could write his name.

There were no cheap books or newspapers, and no proper system of
public instruction. The poor seldom left the counties in which they
were born. They knew nothing of what was going on in the world.
Their