STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1685 .

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seven thousandpounds, a sum then sufficient to make a gentle-man of moderate wishes perfectly easy for life, a sum greatly 'exceeding all that Dryden, during a literary life of forty years,obtained from the booksellers.* Verrio’s chief assistant andsuccessor, Lewis Laguerre, came from France. The two mostcelebrated sculptors of that day were also foreigners. Cibber,whose pathetic emblems of Fury and Melancholy still adornBedlam, was a Dane. Gibbons, to whose graceful fancy anddelicate touch many of our palaces, colleges, and churches owetheir finest decorations, was a Dutchman. Even the designsfor the coin were made by French medallists. Indeed, it wasnot till the reign of George the Second that our country couldglory in a great painter; and George the Third was on thethrone before she had reason to be proud of any of hersculptors.

It is time that this description of the England whichCharles the Second governed should draw to a close. Yetone subject of the highest moment still remains untouched.Nothing has as yet been said of the great body of the people,of those who held the ploughs, who tended the oxen, whotoiled,at the looms of Norwich and squared the Portland stonefor Saint Paul’s. Nor can very much be said. The mostnumerous class is precisely the class respecting which we havethe mo'st meagre information. In those times philanthropistsdid not yet regard it as a sacred duty, nor had demagoguesyet found it a lucrative trade, to expatiate on the distress ofthe labourer. History was too much occupied with courtsand camps to spare a line for the hut of the peasant or for thegarret of the mechanic. The press now often sends forth in aday a greater quantity of discussion and declamation aboutthe condition of the working man than was published duringthe twenty-eight years which elapsed between the Restoration

* The great prices paid to Varelst and Verrio are mentioned in Wal-pole’s Anecdotes of Painting.

CHAP.

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