Sometimes the national errors and follies of one age appear to exceed those of the preceding age, and even of many preceding ages. This has been thought applicable to the present period. Our domestic grievances from different administrations, for the last fifty years, our treatment of the _Caribbs of St. Vincent_, {941} together with our American and subsequent wars, and also the affair of the _Spanish frigates_, and of _Copenhagen_, seem to exceed _tenfold_ all our internal grievances and public ministerial enormities for the preceding fifty, or even _seventy_ years. What addition will be made to this catalogue during the remainder of this reign, it is impossible to foresee; but it is to be hoped that things ere long will take a more favourable turn, as it is surely high time they should. These observations we shall now conclude, in the words of one of the historians of this reign—“In comparing (says he) the brilliant and auspicious commencement of the reign of the present monarch with the dark and dreadful scenes which ensued (and, it is painful to add, with those which at [this] advanced period seem yet impending) the imagination is led forcibly to advert to the sublime symbolical representations introduced by a poet of the highest order, Mr. Gray, in his celebrated Ode of _The Bard_, in allusion to the catastrophe terminating the reign of Richard II. in the splendor of its opening dawn, and its subsequent _fatal indiscretions_, bearing no very distant analogy to the present. {942} “Fair laughs the morn, and soft the Zephyr blows; While proudly riding o’er the azure realm In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes; Youth at the prow, and Pleasure at the helm; Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind’s sway. That hush’d in grim repose expects his evening prey.” Of the transactions and occurrences that constitute the history of Lynn for the first twenty years of this reign we know of none that can be deemed very interesting or important. Some of them, however, are no less so than many of those that have been already related, and therefore cannot be silently passed over, or omitted, without departing from the plan which has been hitherto pursued. In regard to this period, as well as the preceding ones, it is much to be wished we could throw some further light on the internal state of the town, or what relates to the domestic character, social habits, or lives and manners of the inhabitants. Here, however, our materials have always proved very scanty; and the same has been generally the case with other historical writers. This work, accordingly, often appears as a history of the _corporation_; rather than of the town at large, or of the whole community; because our materials relate chiefly to that chartered body, placing all the rest far in the back ground, and often quite out of sight. This is to be regretted.