Page:The Queens of England.djvu/554

 502 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. records of the time that we can form any conception of the enormous difficulties, in the shape of national prejudices and fancied interests on both sides, which had to be grappled with and overcome. It is only by comparing the England and Scot- land of today, with the England and Scotland before that benefi- cent event, that one can comprehend the solid strength and blessings which have flowed from it. But besides and beyond the prestige of Anne's reign from these sources stands that of its literary and philosophic pre- eminence. It is true that the reign of Anne included no Shake- speare, like that of her great female predecessor, but it possessed Newton, Wren, ar.d Locke ; and, in the multitude and variety of talent, far exceeeded the time of Elizabeth. The number of celebrated men who lived in this reign, though many of them, owing to its shortness, did not belong exclusively to it, is extra- ordinary. In art, Hogarth, though not yet known, was prose- cuting his studies. In architecture, Wren and Vanbrugh were in their full fame. Wren completed his grand work, St. Paul's, which he had begun under Charles the Second, in 1710, the eighth year of Anne ; and Vanbrugh was engaged in his great masterpieces of Blenheim and Castle Howard. In the last year of her reign he was knighted for hjs achievements in art, as Sir Isaac Newton had been early in that reign for his astonishing discoveries in scientific philosophy. In dramatic art there were Congreve, Vanbrugh, Colley Cibber, Wycherley and Gay. In philosophy, scientific and moral, besides Newton, there were Locke, Burnet (the author of "The Theory of the Earth"), Sir William Temple, Bolingbroke, and Flamstead the astronomer, to whose "true and apparent diameters of all the planets" New- ton was greatly indebted. In poetry, criticism, and general literature, such an assembly of distinguished men were before the public as had not been witnessed in any former age. Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, Prior, Gay, Allan Ramsey, Addison, Steele, and Defoe, with his inimitable "Robinson Crusoe," and many lesser lumin- aries, conferred on Anne's reign the title of the Augustan age of England. It was then that the periodical literature of England, now grown into so vast and powerful an organ of civilization and social pleasure, was commenced by Addison and Steele in the "Tatler," "Spectator" and "Guardian ;" — all originated in this reign. And, finally, the church and dissent produced some of their most distinguished preachers and writers in Bishops Atterbury, Hoadlv, Burnet and Dr. South and Edmund Cal-