Antiques.

 
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, 
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray; 
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life 
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. 
Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, 1751 

The physical legacy of the first four kings George is one of elegant design and craftsmanship rarely achieved since. Proportion, harmony, order, and balance suffused the arts and architecture. Civilized and secular, Georgian society of the mid-eighteenth century believed in a measured code of genteel manners, oligarchical government, and aristocratic fashions. They were a polite people, and that is evident in their country houses and portraits, which provide a vivid introduction to the culture of eighteenth-century England. Politeness is also to be found in English literature of the time: Alexander Pope's poetry, Horace Walpole's letters, Edward Gibbons's history, James Boswell's Life of Johnson, and Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets.

Most propertied subjects of George II and George III agreed that they lived in a commercial age in which production and consumption increased wealth and improved living standards. Britain seemed to be in the forefront of this progressive engine, thanks to its intellectual inheritance, admirable political institutions, financial sophistication, industrial production, and expanding overseas empire. Nonetheless, international commerce was a fiercely competitive struggle for raw materials, markets, and shipping, which turned every war of the period into a commercial war and every peace into a commercial peace.

All this turmoil provided a steady stream of luxuries for those who could afford them, and pictures of languid folks in silk and satin conversing politely are neither false nor sentimental. The clothes, elegant furniture, formal buildings, and tended ...