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The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw a mushrooming of scholarly and popular works that we still consider \'classics\', for example, Defoe\'s Robinson Crusoe (1719), Hume\'s Treatise on Human Nature (1739), Johnson\'s Dictionary (1755), Smith\'s Wealth of Nations (1776), Gibbon\'s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776), Austen\'s Sense and Sensibility (1811), Scott\'s Waverley Novels (1814 onwards), Shelley\'s Frankenstein (1818) and Tennyson\'s Lady of Shalot (1832).The turn of the century saw artists such as Turner and Constable and, in 1824, George IV encouraged the government to create a National Gallery.Musically, the period started with Handel regularly composing and performing in London and ended with Mendelsson\'s Fingal\'s Cave likewise being performed to a metropolitan audience. Other works such as Rule Britannia, God save the King and Auld Lang Syne also date from this period. In 1823, the Royal Academy of Music opened in London.
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