ONE:There was also a vast deal of decorations of ceilings and staircases still going on, and foreign artists flocked over to execute it. Laguerre, a Frenchman, succeeded Verrio in this department, and his works yet remain at Hampton Court, Burleigh, Blenheim, and other places. Laguerre was appointed to paint the cupola of St. Paul's, designs having been offered also by Antonio Pellegrini, who had thus embellished Castle Howard; but their claims were overruled in favour of Sir James Thornhill. Besides these, there were Lafosse, who had decorated Montagu House, Amiconi, a Venetian, and others, who executed many hundred square yards of such work in England. Such was the fashion for these foreign decorators, that when a native artist appeared equal to any one of them in skill and talent, and superior to most, he found himself paid at a very inferior and invidious rate.
TWO:PRINCE CHARLIE'S VANGUARD AT MANCHESTER. (See p. 100.)
ONE:[See larger version]
TWO:The Marquis of Granby resigned his posts as Paymaster-General of the Ordnance and Commander-in-Chief of the Army, much to the annoyance and against the entreaties of the king and the Duke of Grafton. Camden would have done the same, but as the Ministers were anxious to be rid of him, Chatham and his friends counselled him to remain, and put the Ministry to the odium of dismissing him. This was done, and thus two of the men most popular with the publicGranby and Camdenwere lost to the Administration. The Seals, as Lord Shelburne had predicted, went a-begging. Charles Yorke, second son of the former Lord Chancellor, Hardwicke, had all his life been hankering after this prize, but as he was closely pledged to the party of Lord Rockingham, he most reluctantly declined it. Three days subsequently, however, the king, after the levee, suddenly called him into his closet, and so pressingly entreated him to accept the Seals and rescue his sovereign from an embarrassment, that he gave way. This was on the 18th of January. He was to be raised to the peerage by the title of Lord Morden, but, on encountering the keen reproaches of his party at Lord Rockingham's, he went home and committed suicide. The Seals were then successively offered to Mr. de Grey, the Attorney-General, to Sir Eardley Wilmot, and Lord Mansfield, who refused them, and they were obliged to be put in commission, Lord Mansfield consenting to occupy the woolsack, as Speaker to the House of Lords, till that was done. After some time, Sir Sidney Stafford Smythe, one of the barons of the Exchequer, the Honourable Henry Bathurst, one of the justices of the Common Pleas, and Sir Richard Aston, one of the justices of the King's Bench, were named the commissioners."I have had great satisfaction in giving my assent to the measures which you have presented to me from time to time, calculated to extend commerce, and to stimulate domestic skill and industry, by the repeal of prohibitory and the relaxation of protective duties.
ONE:Among the resources of Great Britain to which she is mainly indebted for her pre-eminence as a manufacturing nation, and without which she would not have been able to make anything like the progress she has made, or to bid defiance to foreign competition as she may always do, are her mines of coal and iron. The total produce of all the British ironworks was found, after a careful estimate, to be, in 1823, 442,066 tons; in 1825, 581,367 tons; in 1828, 653,417, and in 1830, 702,584 tons. In 1844 the quantity reached 1,500,000 tons. The quantity of tin produced in England in 1820 was 3,578 tons; in 1834 it was 4,000 tons. In addition to the quantities used at home, there was a considerable exportation of tin plates, the value of which in 1820 was about 161,000, and in 1840 it was more than 360,000. The produce of the copper mines in Cornwall was much greater than that of the tin mines; for while in 1820 it was only 7,364 tons, it had increased in 1840 to 11,000 tons. The increase during 60 years had been threefold, and the value annually raised exceeded 1,000,000 sterling. In the year 1820 the quantity of coals shipped from the port of Newcastle was more than 2,000,000 tons. In the year 1840 it had increased to nearly 3,000,000. From the port of Sunderland the quantity shipped in 1820 was considerably more than 1,000,000. In 1840 it was 1,300,000 tons. Large quantities were also shipped from the port of Stockton. The chief coal districts have naturally become the chief manufacturing districts; and as the coal is on the spot, it is impossible to estimate the quantities consumed in working the factories in Lancashire, the West Riding of Yorkshire, Nottingham, Derby, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Leicester, Coventry, and Staffordshire. The town of Sheffield alone, it was estimated in 1835, required for manufacturing purposes about 515,000 tons of coals. Dr. Buckland, in his address to the Geological Society, in 1840, stated that "the average value of the annual produce of the mines of the British islands amounts to the enormous sum of 20,000,000, of which about 8,000,000 arises from iron, and 9,000,000 from coals."Another measure in this Session marks an epoch in the history of literature and science in Great Britain. Parliament empowered the Crown to raise money by lottery for the purchase of the fine library, consisting of fifty thousand volumes, and the collection of articles of vertu and antiquity, amounting to sixty-nine thousand three hundred and fifty-two in number, bequeathed by Sir Hans Sloane to the nation on the condition that twenty thousand pounds should be paid to his daughters for what had cost himself fifty thousand pounds. The same Bill also empowered Government to purchase of the Duchess of Portland, for ten thousand pounds, the collection of MSS. and books, etc., made by her grandfather, Harley, the Lord Treasurer Oxford, and also for the purchase of Montagu House, which was offered for sale in consequence of the death of the Duke of Montagu without heirs, in which to deposit these valuable collections. The antiquarian and literary collections of Sir Robert Cotton, purchased in the reign of Queen Anne, were also removed to Montagu House; and thus was founded the now magnificent institution, the British Museum. It is remarkable that whilst Horace Walpole, professing himself a patron of letters, has recorded all the gossip of his times, he has not deemed this great literary, scientific, and artistic event worthy of the slightest mention.
TWO:In architecture the first place is due to the patriarch of the science, Sir John Soane, who was[434] employed in erecting or improving numerous public edifices in the metropolis and elsewhere. The atrocious law-courts, which he added to Westminster Hall, were happily removed in 1883. In 1826 he built the Freemasons' Hall, in Great Queen Street, having been chosen grand superintendent of works to the fraternity of Freemasons some years before. In 1833 he completed the State Paper Office in St. James's Park. He was now in his eightieth year, and he retired from the active labours of the profession in which he had been engaged for sixty years, during forty-five of which he had been in the service of the Bank of England. At his death, which occurred on January 20th, 1837, his house and museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields became the property of the public.
