These words must never be forgotten by any Englishman.
Farmhouse of Hougoumont on the Field of Waterloo.
There were no more great sea-fights after Trafalgar, but many on land, where we had good generals and brave soldiers. The wise and good General Abercromby was killed just as he gained a victory in Egypt. His friend, the good and brave General Moore, was killed at Corunna in Spain, and many other brave officers and men died for the sake of England, but many lived to fight and to conquer. The greatest general in our time was the Duke of Wellington, who put an end to the sad long war by his great victory over the French, commanded by Napoleon himself, at Waterloo. I cannot tell you in this little book how many other battles he won, or how skilfully he fought them, or how well he knew how to choose the officers to help him. But he will have always a name as great as Nelson, by whose side he was buried in St. Paul’s.
After the battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Buonaparte was kept a prisoner in the island of St. Helena till he died, and the brother of Louis the Sixteenth was King of France, under the title of Louis the Eighteenth.
Our good king, George the Third, died soon after. I have told you what kind of a man he was at the beginning of this chapter.
In his reign more things, useful to all men, were found out than in hundreds of years before. New countries were visited, new plants and new animals were brought to England. All the sciences received great encouragement. The arts that are needful in common life were improved. Steam engines were first made useful. The beautiful light given by gas was found out, and all sorts of machines to assist men in their labour were invented. Those arts called the fine arts, I mean such as sculpture, painting, and music, were encouraged by George the Third. But what is of more consequence, the science of medicine and the art of surgery were so improved in his time, that the sufferings of mankind from pain and sickness are much lessened.[4]
CHAPTER LVIII.
GEORGE IV.—1820 to 1830.
How it was this King ruled the kingdom before his father died; how some bad men planned to kill the King’s ministers; how the Princess Charlotte died; how the Turkish fleet was destroyed at Navarino; how the Roman Catholics were admitted into Parliament; and what useful things were done in this reign.
When George the Fourth came to the throne, he was fifty-eight years old, but he had been governing the kingdom for eight years before he was king, during which time he had been called the Prince Regent. The reason of this was, that the old king, who, as you read in the last chapter, had the misfortune to go out of his mind, never recovered his reason from the time his youngest daughter, the Princess Amelia, died, at least not sufficiently to be able to govern; so George, Prince of Wales, being the heir to the throne, governed for his father all that time.