The Critics

The plan of describing all the writers of a period who are not poets, novelists and historians as critics is open to many objections, although I intend to adopt it. If Matthew Arnold's plea for poetry as a criticism of life holds good, it is precisely the poets, novelists and historians who are the true critics. An alternative plan would have been to give a chapter to prose writers and another to the poets; and still another arrangement would have been to divide the subject, as De Quincey suggested, into the literature of power and the literature of imagination, the former including the philosophers and historians, the latter the poets, the novelists, and the more picturesque of the prose writers—Carlyle and Ruskin, for example.

One unhesitatingly assigns to Mr Ruskin the distinction of the critic whose work is most eloquent and impressive. John Ruskin1819- was born in Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, London. He has told us in his autobiography, "PrÆterita," of his early life under a tender mother's care, of his boyish affection for Byron and Scott, and of the youthful impulse to art study excited by the present of Rogers's "Italy," with Turner's illustrations. In 1837 he was entered as a gentleman commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, gaining, two years later, the Newdigate prize for English poetry, his subject being "Salsette and Elephanta." In 1843 he produced the first volume of "Modern Painters: their Superiority in the Art of Landscape Painting to all the Ancient Masters. By a Graduate of Oxford." The work originated, he says, "in indignation at the shallow and false criticism of the periodicals of the day on the work of the great living artist to whom it principally refers." The artist in question was Joseph Mallord William Turner, upon whom Ruskin has pronounced somewhat contradictory judgments at different periods in his career. "Modern Painters" soon extended beyond the mere essay at first intended, and in its final form of five handsome volumes, it was not only a philosophical treatise on landscape painting, but an exhaustive dissertation on many phases of life from one whom Mazzini declared to possess "the most analytic brain in Europe."

Another important work, "The Seven Lamps of Architecture" (1849), is a brilliant attempt at reform in domestic and church architecture. The "lamps" represent the characteristics which good architecture should possess. The first is the Lamp of Sacrifice: "What of beauty and what of riches we may possess, let a portion be dedicated to God. It was in this spirit that our cathedrals were built." The second, the Lamp of Truth, is a plea for honesty in architecture, no imitation wood or marble, but solid wood and solid stone. "Exactly as a woman of feeling," he says, "would not wear false jewels, so would a builder of honour disdain false ornaments. The using of them is just as downright and inexcusable a lie." The third is the Lamp of Power: "Until that street architecture of ours is bettered, until we give it some size and boldness, until we give our windows recess and our walls thickness, I know not how we can blame our architects for their feebleness in more important work." The fourth is the Lamp of Beauty, and in this chapter he maintains that "all the most lovely forms and thoughts" are directly taken from natural objects. The fifth is the Lamp of Life. "To those who love architecture," he says, "the life and accent of the hand are everything." The sixth is the Lamp of Memory: "All public edifices should be records of national life, all ordinary dwelling-houses endeared to their owners by sacred and sweet associations. There is infinite sanctity in a good man's house!" The seventh is the Lamp of Obedience, and here he pleads eloquently for the enforcement of an established type of architecture—the Gothic, in his judgment, lending itself most readily to all services, vulgar or noble. The "Stones of Venice" (1851-1853), in three volumes, gives in further detail Ruskin's views of the laws of architecture. The pre-Raphaelite movement of Millais, Rossetti, and Holman Hunt early enlisted his sympathy, and in "Pre-Raphaelitism" (1851) he declared that they had worthily followed the advice given in "Modern Painters," to "go to nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other thought but how best to penetrate her meaning; rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing." From that time until his Slade lectures at Oxford in 1883-1884 Ruskin wrote several books on painting and architecture, all of them in a style which attracts even those who are least in sympathy with his opinions.

But as Goethe declared of himself that posterity would honour him, not for his poetry, but for his discoveries in science, so Ruskin, perhaps more justly, insists that it is as an economist that he is most deserving of remembrance. The four essays on the first principles of political economy, entitled "Unto this Last" (1862), he declares to be "the truest, rightest-worded, and most serviceable things" he has ever written. These essays were originally published by Thackeray in the Cornhill Magazine, but the remonstrances of its readers brought the series to a speedy end. The principles of state socialism there initiated have since entered the field in direct contest with the established order of things. Mr Ruskin would have every child in the country taught a trade at the cost of government; he would have manufactories and workshops entirely under government regulation for the production and sale of every necessary of life, and for the exercise of every useful art; he would permit competition with government manufactories and shops, but all who desired work could be sure of it at the state establishments: finally, he would provide comfortable homes for the old and destitute, as "it ought to be quite as natural and straightforward a matter for a labourer to take his pension from his parish, because he has deserved well of his parish, as for a man in higher rank to take his pension from his country because he has deserved well of his country." Ruskin has amplified his economic doctrines in "Munera Pulveris," "Time and Tide by Wear and Tyne," and "Fors Clavigera." "Time and Tide" is a collection of letters on the laws of work to the late Thomas Dixon, a working corkcutter of Sunderland. They were originally published in the Manchester Examiner. "Fors Clavigera" is a series of ninety-six letters to working-men, which were issued in monthly parts, and rendered additionally interesting by the quantity of autobiographical anecdotes so freely interspersed in their pages. The title is derived, as Ruskin has explained, from the Latin fors, the best part of three good English words—force, fortitude, and fortune; the root of the adjective clavigera being either clava, a club, clavis, a key, or clavus, a nail, and gero, to carry. Fors the Club-bearer therefore represents the strength of Hercules or of Deed; the Key-bearer, the strength of Ulysses or of Patience; and the Nail-bearer, the strength of Lycurgus or of Law.

To carry out his principles practically, Ruskin established for a short time a tea shop in the Marylebone Road, where nothing but the best tea was sold at a fair price, and he founded the St George's Guild with a view of showing "the rational organisation of country life independent of that of cities;" or in other words, the restoration of the peasantry to the soil of England. One of the conditions of membership was that every member should give one-tenth of his property to the guild for carrying out its work. Ruskin led the way, his property being then estimated at £70,000. He has told us in "Fors" that out of the £157,000 left him by his parents he has spent £153,000. Much of this must have gone to the Ruskin Museum at Sheffield.

It is, however, in following Carlyle as a bracing, invigorating influence that Ruskin has most claim on the gratitude of the present generation. If Carlyle taught us to be content with this "miserable actual," with such environment as may have fallen to our lot, his disciple has given the impulse which has led to the beautifying of that environment. The more refined taste in dress, furniture, and in dwelling-houses which has characterized the later Victorian era, and, side by side therewith, a greater simplicity of life on the part of the more cultured rich, are in an especial degree due to the influence of Ruskin. "What is chiefly needed in England at the present day," he says, "is to show the quantity of pleasure that may be obtained by a consistent, well-administered competence, modest, confessed, and laborious. We need examples of people who, leaving Heaven to decide whether they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves that they will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek—not greater wealth, but simpler pleasures; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity; making the first of possessions, self-possession; and honouring themselves in the harmless pride and calm pursuits of peace." In the "Crown of Wild Olive," "Time and Tide," and "Sesame and Lilies," he emphasizes this teaching with his customary eloquence. Of these books, by far the most important is "Sesame and Lilies," which was written, he says, "while my energies were still unbroken and my temper unfretted, and if read in connection with 'Unto this Last,' contains the chief truths I have endeavoured through all my life to display, and which, under the warnings I have received to prepare for its close, I am chiefly thankful to have learnt and taught." It treats of "the majesty of the influence of good books and of good women, if we know how to read them and how to honour." How to read books he shows by analyzing the well-known passage from Milton's "Lycidas" on "The Pilot of the Galilean Lake," and explaining the deep meaning of its every word. How to honour women, how women may become worthy of honour, he shows by taking us to Shakspere and to Scott, whose Portias and Rosalinds, Catherine Seytons and Diana Vernons are ever ready at critical moments to be a help and a guidance to men; and finally he appeals to the great Florentine, and shows us Beatrice leading Dante through the starry spheres of heaven up to the very throne of light and of truth. But the book is full of healthy and helpful passages, and is, like so much that its author has written, a moral inspiration for all who read it. "I am a great man," Ruskin once said, with a consciousness of genius which reminds us that Horace and Milton, Shakspere and Goethe were equally outspoken. Posterity, we may well believe, will endorse the self-criticism, and will not willingly let his works or his memory die.

Of late years Mr Ruskin has lived, not in the most robust health, in a house at Coniston, in the English Lake District.

The next most prominent critic of the period is one upon whom Ruskin has always poured his bitterest scorn, and who yet will be ever remembered with warmest reverence by those who are old enough to have been his contemporaries. I mean John Stuart Mill.

Jeremy Bentham, who gave such an impulse to all political reform, and made a complete revolution in English jurisprudence, died in 1832. His friend James Mill, who wrote the "History of India" and an "Analysis of the Human Mind," died four years later. "It was," says Professor Bain, "James Mill's greatest contribution to human progress to have given us his son." It may be so, and yet he seems to have done his utmost to spoil the gift, not, as children are usually spoiled, by over-indulgence, but by the most excessive severity.

John Stuart Mill1806-1873 born in Rodney Street, Pentonville. His education, which was conducted by his father, would have been the mental ruin of a mind of smaller powers. "I never was a boy," he said, "never played at cricket; it is better to let Nature have her own way." He began Greek at three, and Latin at eight years of age. The list of classical authors with whose works he was familiar at thirteen is truly appalling. This in itself would have been a small matter had not his cold, stern father discouraged all imaginative reading. Poetry in particular he was taught to look upon as mere vanity, and there are few passages in Mill's "Autobiography" more interesting than the story how in early manhood Wordsworth's poetry came to him like veritable "balm in Gilead," for spiritual refreshment and healing. In 1823 he obtained a clerkship in the India House, from which he withdrew, with ample compensation, when the Indian Government was transferred to the Crown in 1858. Meanwhile he had been an industrious contributor to the Westminster Review and other periodicals, and regularly attended the debates of the Speculative Society which met at Grote's house. Scarcely any scene in literature is better known than the destruction of the manuscript of Carlyle's "French Revolution" which he had lent to Mill. Mill lent it to Mrs Taylor, the lady who afterwards became his wife, and it was inadvertently destroyed. The speechless agony of Mill when he went to inform his friend, the self-command with which Carlyle and his wife concealed their own misery in endeavouring to moderate his self-reproaches—these and many other details have been made familiar to us by many pens. Mill gave Carlyle what monetary compensation he could, and acted, as he always acted in life, with all possible nobleness. Mrs Taylor, who was the real culprit on this occasion, was the wife of a wholesale druggist in Mark Lane. When Mill made her acquaintance, his father remonstrated, but he replied that he had no other feelings towards her than he would have towards an equally able man. The equivocal friendship, which was the talk of all Mill's circle of acquaintances, lasted for twenty years, when Mr Taylor died, and Mill married his widow. It is impossible to regard the enthusiasm of Mill for this lady without feeling how much there was in it of the humorous, how much also of the pathetic. That Mill had a most exaggerated opinion of her intellectual attainments there can be no doubt. He declared her to be the author of all that was best in his writings. Much of his "Political Economy," he said, was her work, and also the "Liberty" and the "Subjection of Women." His language with regard to her was always extravagant, and Grote said that "only John Mill's reputation could survive such displays." Mill's brother George declared that she was "nothing like what John thought her," and there is much evidence to show that she was but a weak reflection of her husband. Still, it is impossible not to sympathize with such an illusion. Mrs Mill died in 1858, and was buried at Avignon, in France, where Mill himself spent many of the later years of his life, and where he died in 1873. It was at Avignon that the Crown Princess of Prussia and the Princess Alice of Hesse proposed to visit him, when he, with due courtesy, declined to see them.

Mill's works, which are very extensive, deal with philosophical, psychological, economical, and political problems. His "Logic" was published in 1843, his "Essays on Unsettled Questions in Political Economy" in 1844, his "Principles of Political Economy" in 1848, and his "Liberty" in 1858. In 1865 he published his "Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy." Four volumes of "Dissertations and Discussions" appeared between 1859 and 1867, and "Considerations on Representative Government" in 1861. In 1865 he entered Parliament as Member for Westminster, losing his seat, however, in 1868. It would be hard to speak too highly of Mill. As a man he was all kindliness and considerate thoughtfulness for others, and his ideal of life was a very high one. Carlyle's Letters, Caroline Fox's Memoirs, and many other sources of information, make this clear. On the literary side he will be variously estimated, as we survey him from one or other aspect of his many-sided career. As a stimulator of public opinion the work he did was enormous. This is not the place to discuss the value of this or that movement associated with his name; but there can be no doubt that many questions, like the reform of the land laws, were initiated by him. In the seventies his philosophy dominated Oxford. It is of no account to-day.

On the philosophical side Mill's position is weakened by his ignorance of the more simple sciences, which we now know to be of the greatest moment in the study of intellectual problems. Mill knew little of physics, and of biology still less. His education in this respect belonged to the old-fashioned type. His work in logic is all but unshaken, although his book has been superseded for school and college use. His psychology, however, his ethics, much of his economics, and above all, his metaphysics, must be corrected by later ideas. Doubtless Mill's readjustments in mental science are most valuable, especially his rehandling of the old doctrines; but fundamentally these are Hume's. Mill's chief philosophical work was destructive. He utterly routed the remnants of a still earlier philosophy, furbished up with all the knowledge and all the acuteness of Sir William Hamilton. But the great generalizations which have changed the whole drift of our philosophy are the Conservation of Energy, and Evolution, including as the latter does the laws and conditions of life, and in particular the doctrine of Heredity. For adequate philosophical guidance on these subjects we must turn to Herbert Spencer.

But first let me point to the number of political economists who have followed Mill in the discussion of the relation of society to the "wealth" it produces. Mill's "Political Economy" was more of a systematic summary of the prevailing doctrines than an original work. It long formed, however, the basis of ordinary English knowledge on the subject, and by its adhesion to the Wages Fund and other erroneous theories, it did not a little harm as well as good to Economic Science. Mill's most enthusiastic disciple in economics, Henry Fawcett1833-1884, went far beyond his master in his acceptance of the main doctrines of the Ricardo school. Many of the positions maintained in his "Political Economy" were abandoned by Mill before his death, particularly the Wages Fund theory; and in his "Autobiography" he traced his own progress to views which, as he said, would class him "under the general designation of Socialist." He declared himself in favour of "the common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labour."[18]

Professor Fawcett, who published his "Manual of Political Economy" in 1863, continued to the last to hold to the old views, and especially to favour as little as possible the intervention of the State. As member of Parliament, first for Brighton and afterwards for Hackney, he did great service by his criticisms of Indian finance. For more than four years (1880-1884) he held the position of Postmaster-General, and introduced many valuable reforms into the department under his administration. Other economists of importance, John Elliott Cairnes and William Stanley Jevons1824-1875
1835-1882
1838-, have differed from Mill in many theoretic principles; but the fairest survey of the later developments of Mill's economics is given by Henry Sidgwick, Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge, and by Alfred Marshall (born 1842). In his "Principles of Political Economy" (1883) Sidgwick attempts, with great clearness, to criticise the conflicting views of the older economists in the light of the modern and more socialist views. He also attempts in his "Methods of Ethics" (1874) a compromise between the Utilitarian and the Intuitionist schools, and he does this also in his "Elements of Politics" (1891), a comprehensive survey of political science. Mr Marshall, who holds the Chair of Political Economy at Cambridge, has written "Economics of Industry" (1879), and "Principles of Economics" (1890). A writer who did much to make foreign economists known in England, and who seemed at one time destined to be the able leader of a new school, was Thomas Edward Cliffe Leslie1827-1882, whose "Essays" are full of terse and suggestive criticism. Cliffe Leslie died, however, without writing any work of first-rate importance. He did something, however, following the line of writers like Richard Jones (1790-1855), to bring academic theory to the test of actual facts.

During the last twenty years of the century, economic study has taken increasingly the direction of elaborate investigation of the circumstances of industrial life. On the one hand, a school of economic historians,—Arnold Toynbee, with a brilliant aperÇu on "The Industrial Revolution," Thorold Rogers in his monumental "History of Agriculture and Prices," Dr Cunningham, in the "Growth of English History and Commerce," and Professor W. J. Ashley in "Economic History and Theory," have greatly extended our knowledge of past industry. On the other, we have the colossal work undertaken at his own expense by Mr Charles Booth, assisted by a group of zealous students—including H. Llewellyn Smith, D. F. Schloss, and Miss Clara Collet, now all filling official posts at the Labor Department of the Board of Trade; and Miss Beatrice Potter (now Mrs Sidney Webb)—a complete survey of London life, statistical, economic, industrial, and social. The nine volumes of this "Life and Labor of the People," already issued, constitute one of the most important statistical works ever undertaken by a private person. Mr and Mrs Sidney Webb wrote together another valuable contribution to economic science in "The History of Trade Unionism" (1894).

But political economy is merely a branch of the larger science of sociology, and for the first general treatment of the whole science, since Comte, we turn to the most characteristic philosopher of the century. Herbert Spencer1820- was born at Derby, where his father was a teacher of mathematics. From his father and uncle, the latter a Congregational minister, he received his early education. Articled at seventeen years of age to a civil engineer, he followed that profession with some success for seven or eight years, when he gradually drifted into literature—a series of letters by him "On the Proper Sphere of Government" appearing in the Nonconformist for 1842. A few years later, he wrote for the Westminster Review, at the house of the editor of which magazine he met George Eliot in 1851, and began the most famous friendship of his life. It was also in 1851 that he published his first work, "Social Statics," and four years later his "Principles of Psychology." In 1861 he published his work on "Education," and the following year his "First Principles." Between that time and 1896 he has slowly built up a system of synthetic philosophy, in a dozen bulky volumes, which has secured him a very large following not only in England, but throughout the Continent and America. His "Descriptive Sociology" is the production of many writers, who have worked under his direction, collecting facts from travellers and scientists all over the world.

To have placed Psychology and Ethics on a scientific basis in harmony with the discoveries of the century is a truly great achievement. Many years have now passed away since Herbert Spencer claimed the whole domain of knowledge as his own, and undertook to revise, in accordance with the latest lights, the whole sphere of philosophy. What must have seemed intolerable presumption in 1860 became in 1896 a completed task. In universality of knowledge he rivals Aristotle and Bacon at a time when the sphere of learning is immensely larger than in their epochs. It is not within the province of this survey of literature to go through the twelve large volumes of his works in detail. We would rather point out that, to the unphilosophical reader, who would willingly know something of Spencer's literary powers, the "Study of Sociology," which he wrote for the "International Scientific Series," and the treatise on "Education" are books which all who read must enjoy.

To him, with Mill, belongs the glory of restoring to Great Britain the old supremacy in philosophy given to her by Bacon, continued by Locke, Hume, and Berkeley, but temporarily interrupted by Kant and Hegel.

Another writer who has attempted to combine psychology with physiology is Alexander Bain1818-, who was for many years Professor of Logic in the University of Aberdeen, and twice Lord Rector. Bain assisted Mill in the preparation of his "Logic," and has himself written a treatise on that science, also lengthy works on "The Senses and the Intellect," and "The Emotions and the Will." Perhaps his work on "Mental and Moral Science" is his best-known contribution to student literature. Although he is the author of books on grammar and composition, Professor Bain's style is always oppressively heavy and unattractive. As Spencer and Bain combined psychology with physiology, so it was the effort of Boole and De Morgan to extend the scope of logic by an ingenious application of mathematics.

The leader for many years of the "Hegelian" school of philosophy at Oxford, which has long held the field against Mill on the one hand and Spencer on the other, was Thomas Hill Green1838-1882, who was appointed Whyte Professor of Moral Philosophy in 1877, and who published the same year a series of articles in the Contemporary Review, on "Mr Herbert Spencer and Mr G. H. Lewes: their Application of the Doctrine of Evolution to Thought." He was preparing for publication his "Prolegomena to Ethics" at the time of his death, and the work was finally edited by Professor A. C. Bradley, who has himself written a treatise on logic, and whose Hegelian work, entitled "Ethical Studies," is of the highest interest. Green was a moral force in Oxford, quite apart from his philosophical speculation, as the following extract from one of his lectures will indicate:—"I confess to hoping for a time when the phrase, 'the education of a gentleman,' will have lost its meaning, because the sort of education which alone makes the gentleman in any true sense will be within the reach of all. As it was the aspiration of Moses that all the Lord's people should be prophets, so with all seriousness and reverence we may hope and pray for a condition of English society in which all honest citizens will recognize themselves and be recognized by each other as gentlemen."

George Henry Lewes1817-1878, whose name is frequently joined with that of Spencer by his association of biology with ethics and psychology, was the son of Charles Lee Lewes, the actor, and was one of the most versatile writers of our times. His first important work was the "Biographical History of Philosophy," originally published in 1845 in Knight's Shilling Library, but amplified without improvement into two substantial volumes in 1867. Lewes's distaste for the ordinary metaphysics, and the severity of his criticism on Hegel, have rendered this work the bÊte noir of all transcendental students; but it remains the one English "History of Philosophy" of any pretension. More unqualified praise may be given to the "Life of Goethe," which Lewes published in 1855. Perhaps no other man then living could have shown himself competent to deal with Goethe's many-sidedness—to discuss "Faust" and "Tasso," "Hermann und Dorothea" at one moment, the poet's biological and botanical discoveries the next, and to estimate at their true worth the speculations on colours, which Goethe held to be more calculated than his poems to secure him immortality. The book remains the standard life of the great Weimar sage in this country, and is popular in Germany, in spite of a vast Goethe literature which has been published since its appearance. In addition to these great works Lewes wrote two novels, one of which, "Ranthorpe," Charlotte BrontË praised enthusiastically. He edited the Fortnightly Review, and also initiated a craze for aquaria, by his "Seaside Studies;" he endeavoured, indeed, to popularise many of the sciences, particularly physiology. His last years were devoted to philosophical questions, and his "Problems of Life and Mind" were published in fragments, the concluding volume, under George Eliot's editorship, after his death.

The earliest writer of the era to popularise science was Sir David Brewster1781-1868, an eminent physicist, in whose Edinburgh CyclopÆdia Carlyle commenced his literary career. His "Life of Newton," "Martyrs of Science," and "More Worlds than One" are still widely read. Michael Faraday1791-1867, another famous physicist, is still better remembered by our own generation, principally for his popular lectures at the Royal Institution, where he was superintendent of the laboratory for forty-eight years. He was a blacksmith's son, and was originally apprenticed to a bookbinder. After his discovery of magneto-electricity, he had, he told Tyndall, a hard struggle to decide whether he should make wealth or science the pursuit of his life. Tyndall calculates that Faraday could easily have realised £150,000; but he declared for science and died a poor man.

John Tyndall1820-1893, who once said that it was his great ambition to play the part of Schiller to this Goethe, succeeded Faraday at the Royal Institution, and wrote about him eloquently in his "Faraday as a Discoverer." Tyndall was born at Leighlin Bridge, Carlow, Ireland, in 1820. His father was a member of the Irish constabulary. His services to many branches of science were great; but he concerns us here not so much by his treatises on electricity, sound, light, and heat, or by his discoveries in diamagnetism, as by his "Lectures on Science for Unscientific People," which, Huxley said, was the most scientific book he had ever read, and which has yet the transcendent merit of giving enjoyment as well as instruction, even to the readers of three-volume novels. In 1856 Tyndall made a journey to Switzerland, in company with Professor Huxley, and the friends afterwards wrote a treatise "On the Structure and Motion of Glaciers." Geological treatises may be said to have given the fullest play to the literary side of science. The work of Robert Bentley and Sir Joseph Hooker in botany, of Michael Foster, St George Mivart, and Francis Maitland Balfour in biology, is, it may be, equal or superior to that of the bulk of the writers whose achievements we have chronicled; but it is not a part of literature. Burdon Sanderson, Balfour Stewart, and a host of other men, have done incalculable service in the Victorian era—service, it is to be feared, which scarcely obtains as generous recognition as the cheap generalisations of smaller men; but scientific text-books, however important, are scarcely within the scope of these chapters. Geology, on the other hand, is, as it were, a conglomerate of the sciences, and lends itself readily to the most eloquent literary expression. Few writers have been more widely read than Hugh Miller1802-1856, a Cromarty stone-mason, whose first enthusiasm for study of the rocks arose from following his trade, but whose life was mainly devoted to journalism, and to editing The Witness. His "Old Red Sandstone," "Footprints of the Creator," and "The Testimony of the Rocks" were effective in kindling a taste for natural science.

The special study which Miller gave to the Red Sandstone rocks was extended by Sir Roderick Impey Murchison1792-1871 to the Silurian System, and his work entitled "Siluria" has passed through many editions. Scotland seems to have been the nursery of geologists, for Miller and Murchison, Lyell and the brothers Geikie, were all born north of the Tweed. Sir Charles Lyell1797-1875 was born at Kinnordy, in Forfarshire, and educated at Midhurst, and at Exeter College, Oxford. Called to the bar, he went the Western Circuit for two years, but, when attending some of Dr Buckland's lectures, he became attached to geology. His "Principles of Geology," first published in 1830, caused a revolution in the science. Never before had there been presented such a connected illustration of the influences which had caused the earth's changes in the unresting distribution of land and water areas. Much of Lyell's great work reads like a fairy tale; much might have been thought the fruit of an imaginative rather than of a scientific mind. Lyell's smaller book, the "Student's Elements of Geology," was injured in literary merit by the progressive study of the science of which he had been the second father. The constant addition of fresh knowledge, and his conversion to Darwin's views, necessitated the continual rewriting of parts and further revision by other hands after the author's death. "The Antiquity of Man" (in defence of Darwin's theory) is of more value from a literary standpoint. Before the beginning of the reign William Buckland1784-1856, Dean of Westminster, by whose lectures Lyell had so much profited, had written his famous Bridgewater Treatise on "Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology." His son, Frank Buckland1826-1880, wrote clever and readable books on "Natural History," and had genuine enthusiasm for the study of animal life; but he was charged with having vulgarised the studies in which he took so keen an interest. The most distinguished living geologist is Sir Archibald Geikie, who is now director-general of the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom. His "Text Book," which was first published in 1882, is a model of lucid writing, and his essays are among the most pleasant literary products of the age. His brother, James Geikie, has written an important work on glaciation, entitled "The Great Ice Age."

But the scientific literature of the past sixty years might almost be said to be summarised in the work of Charles Darwin1809-1882. A funeral in Westminster Abbey, amid the mourning of many nations, closed the career of one whose life-work had often been greeted with scorn. "Our century is Darwin's century," said a leading German newspaper (Allgemeine Zeitung) at his death, and the statement is no exaggeration. Those who witnessed the long stream of prelates and nobles who filed through the Abbey at his funeral, the then Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr Tait) and the present Prime Minister (Lord Salisbury) among the number, could not but recall the reception of the great investigator's theory twenty years before. Bishop Wilberforce in particular denounced it in the Quarterly Review as "a flimsy speculation." Darwin's antecedents were of a nature such as, on the principle of heredity, a great man should possess. His paternal grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was a poet, whose "Botanic Garden" may still be read with interest. His maternal grandfather was Josiah Wedgwood, the famous potter. Darwin was the son of a doctor of Shrewsbury, and was educated at the Grammar School of that city and at Christ's College, Cambridge. Here his natural history studies were sympathetically directed by Professor Henslow, the botanist, by whose recommendation he was selected to accompany the Beagle on its expedition to survey the South American coast. The results of his travels were embodied in his first important work, "Journals of Researches during a Voyage round the World," which was published in 1839, and was republished under the title of "A Naturalist's Voyage round the World." In the same year he married his cousin, Miss Wedgwood, and, after a few years of London life, took up his residence in a pleasant country house at Down, near Beckenham, in Kent. Here he pursued his remarkable investigations until his death, surrounded by his accomplished children, and finding, as he told a friend, his highest emotional gratification in the joys of family life and a love of animate nature. Two of his sons, George Howard Darwin and Francis Darwin, have done good work in science, the one in geology and astronomy, the other in botany. Darwin himself wrote also on the "Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs," revolutionising the popular view concerning these remarkable phenomena. Discovering that reef-building polyps cannot live at depths of more than twenty fathoms, he found it necessary to explain the presence of rocks built by them which rise from more than 2000 feet below the surface of the sea. This he did on the hypothesis of a gradual subsidence of the sea-floor whilst the polyps are at work. This view has since been generally accepted by geologists, although somewhat modified by Dr John Murray's observation in the Challenger expedition, that the reefs are not always of solid coral, and that they may in many cases have been formed on the cones of extinct volcanoes.

Darwin had pondered for many years over the theory which was to make him famous before he decided to bring his conclusions before the public. After considerable observation of every form of animal and vegetable life and experiments in selective breeding he concluded that the species of plants and animals now on the earth were not created in their present form, but had been evolved by unbroken descent with modification of structure from cruder forms, the remains of many of which are constantly discovered in the older rocks. He discovered in 1858 that Alfred Russel Wallace1822- had independently arrived at the same conclusions, and so it was agreed that their views should be jointly laid before the LinnÆan Society. In 1859 the "Origin of Species" was published, and it was followed by a number of works bearing upon the same subject, the most notable of all being the "Descent of Man." Darwin's work on "Earth Worms," perhaps the most purely literary of all his writings, appeared the year before his death. It is not the province of a sketch of Victorian literature to discuss the many important bearings of the Darwinian hypothesis. Received with unbounded contempt by literary men so eminent as Carlyle and Ruskin, it was accepted only with qualification by men of science like Agassiz, Carpenter, and Owen; but an overwhelming majority of scientific men in England, America, and above all in Continental countries, have declared in its favour. The theory has received popular interpretation in Germany from Haeckel, and in England from Huxley, although in this connection we must not forget George John Romanes1848-1894, the author of "Animal Intelligence" and "Mental Evolution in Animals," Grant Allen, and Edward Clodd.

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), one of the greatest of our men of science, was of interest not only on account of his vast scientific attainments, but for his profound acquaintance with metaphysics, as illustrated in his "Life of Hume," his wide culture, and his exquisite literary style. He was born and educated at Ealing, in Middlesex, where his father was a schoolmaster. He studied medicine at the Charing Cross Hospital, then entered the Royal Navy as an assistant surgeon, and went in the Rattlesnake to survey the Barrier Reef of Australia. The papers which he sent to the Royal and LinnÆan Societies gave him fame. After his return he devoted himself to original research; but work of that sort brings no recompense in money, and Huxley's means were narrow. In 1854, however, he obtained the chairs of Natural History and PalÆontology at the School of Mines, and to this he afterwards added the appointment of Inspector of Fisheries. The "blue ribbon" of science, the Presidency of the Royal Society, was conferred on him in 1883. Huxley wrote much on biological problems, and by the publication of his "Physiography" gave a new name to the science which has extended the scope of the old Physical Geography: but his chief interest for us here is in his "Lay Sermons," "Addresses and Reviews," his "Critiques and Addresses," and his "American Addresses," all of which may take rank among the finest prose of our age.

As an interesting contrast to the work of Darwin and Huxley, and all that it has implied to modern literature, one may refer once again to the movement inspired by Cardinal Newman. His most prominent associates for many years, neither of whom, however, left the Church of England for the Church of Rome, were Pusey and Keble.

Edward Bouverie Pusey1800-1882 was practically the founder of the modern High Church movement in the Anglican community. A writer of "Tracts for the Times," he was, after Newman had "gone over to Rome," the recognized head of the movement, and his followers were frequently called "Puseyites." A demoralization of the party seemed inevitable on Newman's secession, but the publication of Dr Pusey's "Letter to Keble" gave it fresh life. In 1866 his "Eirenicon," a proposal for the reunion of Christendom, drew a reply from Cardinal Newman, with whom, however, he maintained the profoundest friendship to the end. John Keble1792-1866, who was born at Fairford, in Gloucestershire, was a man of far higher gifts. Educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he obtained a fellowship at Oriel. For some years he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford, a position for which he had qualified himself by the publication of the "Christian Year," a volume of religious poems for every Sunday and church festival, many of which have been admitted into the hymnology of all the Christian sects. Perhaps truer poetry is to be found in his "Lyra Innocentium," a series of poems on children, for there the human element is more marked. Keble also wrote a "Life of Bishop Wilson," and published several volumes of sermons.

The movement of Liberal theology, to which men like Keble gave the name of "national apostasy," was headed in its earlier developments by Archbishop Whately and Dr Arnold of Rugby, and more recently by the Rev. Frederick Denison Maurice and Dean Stanley. Richard Whately1787-1863, who was at Oriel with Keble, had published his once popular "Logic" and "Rhetoric" before the commencement of the reign of Victoria, and in 1831 had been made Archbishop of Dublin, a position which he held till his death, in 1863, winning all hearts by his kindness and liberality, by his generous tolerance and zeal for progress. His "Logic" is chiefly of importance for the impetus it gave to the study of that science. His "Christian Evidences" gained in its day a wider audience. Thomas Arnold1795-1842 was born at East Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, and was educated at Winchester, and with Keble at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. After ordination he removed to Laleham-on-Thames, where he prepared young men for the universities. When, in 1827, the head-mastership of Rugby became vacant, Arnold was elected on the strength of a recommendation by Dr Hawkins, to the effect that he "would change the face of education all through the public schools of England." The prophecy was fulfilled. He was the first to introduce modern languages and modern history and mathematics into the regular school course. At the same time he always insisted on the value of the classics as a basis of education, and himself prepared an edition of "Thucydides," and wrote a "History of Rome" in its earlier periods, which is at least eminently interesting. His services to his country as an educational reformer were even greater on the moral side. Dr Arnold was a purifying influence to men of the higher classes, to a degree which is inexplicable to the present generation. For a time he was unpopular, and his school suffered, through his advocacy of church reform and his association with political Liberalism; but the success of his pupils at the universities had caused a reaction in his favour at the time of his death, which occurred all too early, for he was only forty-seven. Of his many distinguished pupils, perhaps the best known are Tom Hughes and Dean Stanley. Thomas Hughes1823-1896, who in 1882 was made a county-court judge, wrote many books, but only one of them entitles him to be remembered to-day. In a moment of happy inspiration, he wrote the finest boy's book in the language. "Tom Brown's School Days" was published in 1857. It is a picture of life at Rugby, under Dr Arnold's healthy, manly guidance.

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley1815-1881 wrote his "Life of Dr Arnold" in 1844. A son of Edward Stanley, Bishop of Norwich, he was born at Alderley, in Cheshire. From Rugby he went to Balliol College, Oxford, where he had an exceptionally distinguished career. In 1851 he became a canon of Canterbury, and his picturesque "Memorials of Canterbury" were the outcome of residence in that city. In 1863 he was made Dean of Westminster, notwithstanding the opposition of the High Church party, to whom the theological views expressed in his numerous works were distasteful. Of these writings, "Sinai and Palestine," "Lectures on the Eastern Church," and "Lectures on the Jewish Church," are the best known. As Dean of Westminster Dr Stanley became an active leader of the Broad Church movement. Although not a contributor to "Essays and Reviews" his services to the movement were incalculable. He invited Max MÜller to lecture in the Abbey, befriended PÈre Hyacinthe, and gave sympathy to Bishop Colenso. His speeches in the Lower House of Convocation, particularly one in which he proposed the suppression of the Athanasian Creed in the services of the Church, made him many enemies; but few ecclesiastics have been so beloved by both sovereign and people. One recalls the pleasant, active little man, so proud of his Abbey Church, with a deep sigh that he should be no more. His life was written by his successor, Dean Bradley.

Of the contributors to "Essays and Reviews," the manifesto of the Broad Church party, which appeared in 1860, Frederick Temple must be mentioned, because his contribution, "The Education of the World," led to a frantic effort to prevent his receiving the bishopric of Exeter, an effort which was unsuccessful. In 1885 Dr Temple was made Bishop of London, and in 1896 Archbishop of Canterbury. Other distinguished writers in "Essays and Reviews" were Dr Jowett and Mr Mark Pattison. Benjamin Jowett1817-1893, master of Balliol, who wrote the essay on "The Interpretation of Scripture," achieved his greatest successes by his brilliant translations of Plato, Thucydides, and "The Politics" of Aristotle. His Plato drew from John Bright, who was little inclined to appreciate the great thoughts of the Athenian philosopher, an expression of admiration for the classic English of the Oxford professor. Jowett's life was written by Evelyn Abbott and Lewis Campbell. Mark Pattison1813-1884, whose contribution to "Essays and Reviews" was on "The Tendencies of Religious Thought in England," assisted Newman and Pusey in the early days of the Tractarian movement, but finally went over to the Liberalism which they so much dreaded. In 1861 he was elected Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford. Pattison was a profound scholar. Few men have led lives so absorbed in books. The results of his learning are apparent in his interesting "Life of Isaac Casaubon," which he had hoped to follow by a life of Scaliger.

But men like Jowett and Pattison have been the arm-chair representatives of a movement which found one of its most active supporters in John Frederick Denison Maurice1805-1872. Maurice was the son of a Unitarian minister, and was born at Normanstone, near Lowestoft. For a time he was editor of the AthenÆum, but joined the Anglican Church in 1831, and accepted a curacy near Leamington. A treatise entitled "Subscription no Bondage," which defined his position in the Church, excited much attention, as did also his tracts on the "Kingdom of Christ." In conjunction with Kingsley and Hughes he published pamphlets called "Politics for the People," and organised the Christian socialist and co-operative movement of 1850. Like Kingsley, Maurice may be labelled a Broad Churchman, not so much on doctrinal grounds as for the breadth of his sympathies. It was social rather than theological problems to which he attached importance. Kingsley, indeed, described himself to correspondents as a Broad Churchman, a High Churchman, and an Evangelical, as the mood seemed to take him. Bishop Colenso is a good type of the more militant theologians. John William Colenso1814-1883 first came before the public as the author of mathematical text-books. At this time he was vicar of Forncett St Mary, in Norfolk, but in 1853 he was made Bishop of Natal. In South Africa he was a zealous advocate of the rights of the natives against the oppression of the Boers and Cape Town officials; but in a measure his influence was weakened by the publication of his work on Biblical criticism, "The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua Critically Examined," which was condemned by both Houses of Convocation as heretical. When Colenso came to England in 1874 he was inhibited from preaching in the dioceses of London, Lincoln, and Oxford. At Oxford, however, his sermon was read from the pulpit of Balliol while the Bishop sat below, and the same device was pursued at Mr Stopford Brooke's Church in London. Dean Stanley invited him to the Abbey pulpit, claiming freedom from the jurisdiction of Dr Jackson, the then Bishop of London; but Colenso declined to increase the ill-feeling which had been excited.

Another distinguished member of the Broad Church party, Edwin Abbott1838-, was head-master of the City of London School from 1865 to 1889. He has published several educational works. His religious influence has developed itself through "Philochristus; Memoirs of a Disciple of our Lord," and "Onesimus; Memoirs of a Disciple of St Paul," also by a volume of sermons, "Through Nature to Christ," which is perhaps the best evidence of the development of the Broad Church movement. Dr Whately, one of its founders, argued for the miracles as indicative of the Divine origin of Christianity; Dr Abbott esteems the insistence on miracles as a bar to belief. Perhaps the purest and most inspiring of all the eloquent teachers belonging to this party was Frederick William Robertson1816-1853 of Brighton, whose sermons have been widely read, especially in America, and whose lectures are as helpful and bracing as any written in our time. Robertson's remarkable career of only thirty-seven years has been made known to us by the beautiful life which was written by Mr Stopford Brooke. Stopford Augustus Brooke (1832- ) was born in Dublin and educated at Trinity College. At first he was a Church of England clergyman and a Queen's Chaplain, but seceded in 1880 on account of his inability to believe in many supernatural phases of Christian teaching. His "Primer of English Literature," "History of Early English Poetry," "Theology in the English Poets," and "Life of Milton" have the ring of the genuine, and, indeed, of the great, critic.

Outside the pale of the Anglican community, but powerful factors in that same Broad Church movement which has been charged with "stretching the old formula to meet the new facts," one recalls the names of Lynch and Martineau. Thomas Toke Lynch1818-1871 was born at Dunmow, in Essex, and held for many years the ministry of a small Congregational Church, first in Grafton Street and afterwards in the Hampstead Road, London. He died in comparative obscurity; but the poems in his "Rivulet," once condemned as heretical, have found their way into most hymnologies.

James Martineau1805- was born at Norwich, and was originally educated for the profession of civil engineer, but turned to theological studies, and was for some time the minister of a Presbyterian Church in Dublin. Then, during a residence in Liverpool, he became a supporter of the philosophy of Bentham and the elder Mill, but finally abandoned that position for Kantian metaphysics. Thenceforth he was to be a great power on behalf of the Theistic and Unitarian position, and he turned vigorously upon the materialistic beliefs which he had abandoned, and was, it may be added, somewhat too harsh to his sister Harriet when, later in life, she adopted them. His "Endeavour after the Christian Life" and "Hours of Thought on Sacred Things" are two of his best known works, although a more philosophical interest attaches to his "Study of Spinoza" and his "Types of Ethical Theory."

I have dwelt at some length on the work of the High Church and Broad Church parties during the reign, because with these bodies it has been a period of great literary achievement, and it can scarcely be claimed that Evangelicanism, however earnest, zealous, and numerically powerful, has added much of enduring worth to religious literature. Richard William Church1815-1890, Dean of St Paul's, who wrote so eloquently on Dante and St Anselm, belonged to the Liberal High Church school, as did also Henry Parry Liddon1829-1890, a canon of the same cathedral, whose Bampton lectures "On the Divinity of Jesus Christ" marked him out as one of the most eloquent of modern preachers. One of the greatest scholars in the English Church, Joseph Barber Lightfoot1828-1889, Bishop of Durham, who replied to the author of "Supernatural Religion," belonged to the same party. Midway between the Broad Church and the Evangelical schools we find Frederick William Farrar1831-, Dean of Canterbury, who, as head-master of Marlborough College, wrote stories of boy life. He succeeded Kingsley as a Canon of Westminster, and excited much attention by his sermons on the doctrine of eternal punishment. His lives of Christ and of St Paul have been widely read. John Charles Ryle (1816- ), Bishop of Liverpool, has been perhaps the most famous literary exponent of the Evangelical position. "Shall we know one another in Heaven" and "Bible Inspiration" were characteristic books from his pen. John Saul Howson1816-1885, Dean of Chester, who, in conjunction with the Rev. W. J. Conybeare, wrote an able work on "The Life and Epistles of St Paul," was also a Low Churchman.

The most distinguished Nonconformist minister of the Victorian period, and the man whose sermons found most readers, was Charles Haddon Spurgeon1834-1892, with whom eloquence and earnestness were combined with the possession of a simple English style, which he derived from a study of the Puritan fathers. In "John Ploughman's Talk" (1868) Spurgeon put forth much homely wisdom in a quaint and humorous garb.

I have said well nigh enough concerning speculative writers and theologians, but it is necessary to mention here Henry Longueville Mansel1820-1871, who succeeded Milman as Dean of St Paul's. Mansel was a vigorous defender of the Anglican position. "The Limits of Religious Thought" was the title of one of his books; "Metaphysics, or the Philosophy of Consciousness, Phenomenal and Real" was another, but he crossed swords with many disputants, with F. D. Maurice, with J. S. Mill, and indeed he was ever a fighter, subtle and skilful. Another theologian, Cardinal Manning1808-1892, was a disputant on behalf of Roman Catholicism, he having left the Anglican Church in 1851. His many books and sermons are to-day only of interest to the theological student. His life was written in 1896, and caused much controversy through its exceeding candour and indiscretion.

Philosophy has had notable students also in Ferrier, Caird, and Clifford. James Frederick Ferrier1808-1864 who was a nephew of Susan Ferrier the author of "Marriage," was professor of moral philosophy at St Andrews. He wrote "Lectures in Greek Philosophy" and other works. Edward Caird (1835- ) is master of Balliol and he has written "Philosophy of Kant," "Essays on Literature and Philosophy," and "The Evolution of Religion." William Kingdon Clifford1845-1879 belonged to the opposite camp. He obtained an early reputation as a mathematician and became professor of applied mathematics in University College, London, in 1871. His powerful contributions to the literary side of science were contained in "Seeing and Thinking" and "Lectures and Essays," the latter volume being edited after his death by his friends Mr Leslie Stephen and Sir Frederick Pollock.

The three most notable books that we have seen from the anti-theological side, apart from Matthew Arnold's "Literature and Dogma," are "The Creed of Christendom," "Phases of Faith," and "Supernatural Religion," although to these may perhaps be added translations of the Lives of Christ, of Strauss, and of Renan. The "Creed of Christendom" was the work of William Rathbone Greg1809-1881, who wrote also "Enigmas of Life" (1872), and "Rocks Ahead" (1874). "Phases of Faith" was the work of Francis William Newman1805-1897, a younger brother of Cardinal Newman, but at the opposite pole of religious conviction. He has written many books, the most successful being one on "The Soul" (1849). Another on "Theism" (1858), was inspired by the same theistic, but non-Christian impulse. "Phases of Faith" (1858), was his most successful work. The author of "Supernatural Religion" is Walter Richard Cassels, who has also published a reply to Bishop Lightfoot's strictures upon his larger work—a work now all but forgotten, but which created a considerable sensation at the time of its appearance.

The age has been, particularly in its later developments, an age of good critics of literature. Criticism unhappily rarely lasts much beyond its own decade. Even Mr Matthew Arnold lives now only by his poetry, and the many good things that he said about books are being steadily forgotten. Arnold was a great critic, and so also was Walter Pater1839-1894, whose "Marius the Epicurean" and "Imaginary Portraits" should have ranked him with writers of imagination were it not that criticism was his dominant faculty. Pater has been described as "the most rhythmical of English prose writers," and his "Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry," and his "Appreciations" give him a very high place among the writers of our time.

Philip Gilbert Hamerton1834-1894 was another great critic, who wrote at least one work of imagination. "Marmorne" is a very pretty story of life in France. With every aspect of French life Mr Hamerton was well acquainted, as he lived in that country for very many years. He wrote regularly upon art topics, and edited an art magazine, The Portfolio; but it is by his volume of essays entitled "The Intellectual Life" that he will be most kindly remembered for many a year to come.

Certain writers whom I must mention are entitled to a place both as critics and as poets. Mr W. E. Henley, Mr F. W. H. Myers, William Bell Scott, and William Allingham for example. William Ernest Henley1849- has written plays in conjunction with R. L. Stevenson, and his "Book of Verses" and "Song of the Sword" entitle him to very high rank among the poets of the day. But he is also a critic of exceptional vigour and force, and since Matthew Arnold there has been no volume of criticism so full of discrimination and sound judgment as "Views and Reviews." Ill health has compelled Mr Henley to waste much of his undoubted talent. He is at present editing fine library editions of Burns and Byron. Frederic William Henry Myers1843- wrote "Saint Paul," a poem of considerable reputation, but his critical essays are more widely known. They were published in two volumes, "Classical" and "Modern," and are full of delightful ideas delightfully expressed. His biography of Wordsworth is a daintily fanciful memoir, abounding in good criticism. Mr Myers's brother Ernest is also a poet, and so also was William Bell Scott1811-1890. He was, it is true, a poet of a narrow range, but a critic of great energy and industry. Bell Scott became best known by his "Autobiography," published after his death. In it he discussed Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite movement with sufficient frankness. William Allingham1824-1889 wrote many poems and ballads full of the Celtic spirit, and of Ireland, which he loved as the land of his birth. Allingham was for a time editor of Fraser's Magazine, and he contributed regularly to the chief literary periodicals of his day.

Literary critics of importance to-day are Edward Dowden, Richard Garnett, George Saintsbury, Edmund Gosse, Leslie Stephen, and Andrew Lang—all of whom are happily living and writing.

Edward Dowden1843-, who is an Irishman, and a professor of Trinity College, Dublin, has a genius for accuracy and is a master of detail. For textual criticism of Wordsworth and Shelley he has no superior. He has an immense knowledge of the literature of many languages, and holds without dispute the first place among living students of German literature in this country. His knowledge of English literature is profound, and in "Shakspere, his Mind and Art," and "Studies in Literature," he has said some singularly illuminating things about books. With his "Life of Shelley" one observes a certain deterioration; Professor Dowden, with all his profound love of literature, has scarcely the qualities which would find attraction in the curiously impulsive character of the poet Shelley. Dowden was happier when writing about Southey, and he is still more at home with great impersonal literary figures like Shakspere and Goethe.

Richard Garnett1835-,—better known to the world to-day as Dr Garnett—has also written on Shelley, not merely with sympathy but with partisanship. Dr Garnett, who is honourably associated with the British Museum Library, is a most acute critic, a biographer of Carlyle and Emerson, a translator from the Greek and German, and, like Professor Dowden, a poet.

George Saintsbury1845-, who is Professor of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, has been an industrious critic for many years, and his knowledge of French literature in particular is profound. His acquaintance with English literature in the seventeenth century has, however, considerably vitiated his style. It is not easy to tolerate the phraseology of the seventeenth century in modern books. This defect of style is regrettably noticeable in two volumes of literary history which Professor Saintsbury has published, one dealing with the seventeenth and the other with the nineteenth century. It is in certain brief biographies of Sir Walter Scott and others that Professor Saintsbury is most excellent; but his wide knowledge and his genuine grasp of the most salient characteristics of good literature are indisputable qualities which rank him high among the bookmen of his day.

Edmund Gosse1849- is not less distinguished than the writers I have named. He would be widely known as a writer of charming verse were he not actively engaged in literary criticism. The son of a famous naturalist, Mr Gosse is the author of many admirably written books about the literature of the past and the present. What Carlyle so largely did for German literature by introducing it to English readers Mr Gosse has done for Scandinavian literature. In conjunction with Mr William Archer—a dramatic critic of singular insight—he has translated Ibsen, whose influence has been as marked during the past ten years as the influence of German writers was marked during the previous thirty. Mr Gosse's best biography is his "Life of Gray."

A critic of remarkable learning is Leslie Stephen1832-, whose "Hours in a Library" and "History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century" are books which have profoundly impressed the age. Mr Leslie Stephen has written a large number of biographies, all of them characterised by singular accuracy, by remarkable graces of style, and by genuine insight. He was the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, a work which has proved invaluable to students of our later literature.

Andrew Lang1844- is the last of the critics I have named, and not the least active. He has shone in many branches of literary work. His "Ballads and Lyrics of Old France," "Ballades in Blue China," and numerous other verses, have gained him considerable reputation as a poet. His translations of Homer and Theocritus are by many counted the finest translations that our literature has seen. Some have contended that his musical prose rendering of the Odyssey is incomparably superior to all the efforts of Pope, of Cowper, and of the many other poets who have attempted to render Homer in verse. Mr Lang is an authority on folk-lore; he has joined issue with Professor Max MÜller on many points which are of keen interest to those who are attracted towards the science of language and the study of comparative religion. As a writer of fairy-tales, and as the editor of books of fairy-stories, Mr Lang has endeared himself to thousands belonging to the younger generation. But all this is but dimly and inefficiently to appraise Mr Lang's marvellous versatility. He has written fiction, history, and, above all, biography, his biographical work including a Life of Sir Stafford Northcote and a Life of John Gibson Lockhart, Scott's son-in-law.

Biography has generally been written by literary critics, and one requires no apology in any case for ranking the biographers among the critics. John Gibson Lockhart1794-1854 himself was a notable example. He was editor of the Quarterly Review, and an industrious writer for many years; but he is best known to us by his "Life of Sir Walter Scott," which was published—it is worthy of note—in 1837, the year of the Queen's accession. Lockhart's "Scott" is beyond question the most important biography of the reign. The longest is that of Milton by Professor Masson. David Masson1822- has held a chair of literature in University College, London, and later at Edinburgh. Few men know English literature better than he. His name will always be associated with his monumental "Life of Milton," a solid, accurate, exhaustive book; but he has written pleasantly on "British Novelists and their Styles" and "Drummond of Hawthornden," besides sundry other books. Many of our poets have had capable biographers. Professor Knight of St Andrews has devoted himself for many years to Wordsworth, and has written his biography besides editing his collected works. The late James Dykes Campbell (1835-1894) wrote a biography of Coleridge distinguished by remarkable thoroughness. Professor W. J. Courthope has proved himself Pope's best biographer and editor, and is giving us a good "History of English Poetry," which at present reaches only to the Reformation. Mr Churton Collins, one of the most thorough of our critics, has written on Swift, as has also Sir Henry Craik; and Swift's life in Ireland has been gracefully sketched by Mr Richard Ashe King, a novelist whose "Love the Debt" and "The Wearing of the Green" have commanded a large audience. Swift has been a favourite subject with the biographers. A life of him was the task upon which John Forster1812-1876 was engaged at the time of his death. Forster was an untiring biographer, and he benefited literature as well by his death as by his life, in that he bequeathed his fine library of books and manuscripts to the nation. John Forster wrote a Life of Walter Savage Landor, another of Goldsmith, and another of Charles Dickens, against which it was urged that he had introduced too much of his own personality. Perhaps Forster's best work was his "Life of Sir John Eliot," an expansion of a biography of that patriot which he had contributed to his "Statesmen of the Commonwealth."

Biography is the great medium of instruction and inspiration of that little band of Positive philosophers who accept their gospel from Auguste Comte, whose "Philosophie Positive" they have translated into English. "Study the 'Philosophie Positive' for yourself," says George Henry Lewes, who, with George Eliot, had much enthusiasm for the new cult; "study it patiently, give it the time and thought you would not grudge to a new science or a new language; and then, whether you accept or reject the system, you will find your mental horizon irrevocably enlarged. 'But six stout volumes!' exclaims the hesitating aspirant: Well, yes; six volumes requiring to be meditated as well as read. I admit that they 'give pause' in this busy bustling life of ours; but if you reflect how willingly six separate volumes of philosophy would be read in the course of the year the undertaking seems less formidable. No one who considers the immense importance of a doctrine which will give unity to his life, would hesitate to pay a higher price than that of a year's study." Among the most gifted of the Positivists is Frederic Harrison1831-, whose "Order and Progress," and "Choice of Books," are well known. Among his companions in literary and religious warfare have been James Cotter Morison1831-1888, who wrote biographies of St Bernard of Clairvaux and Macaulay, "The Service of Man" which was a contribution to religious propaganda; and Richard Congreve (born 1818), who was a pupil of Dr Arnold at Rugby, and who has written many thoughtful political tracts.

An attempt to popularise Comte by an abridgment of his great work was made by Harriet Martineau1802-1876, who was born at Norwich, and was one of the most versatile of Victorian writers. None of her work has stood the test of time, perhaps because she had so little of real genius, although possessed undoubtedly of great intellectual endowments. Not the less readily should we recognise that she exercised considerable influence upon her own generation. She wrote many stories dealing with social subjects, and tales illustrative of Political Economy, which dispersed many a popular illusion. In a visit to America she learned to sympathise with the Northern States, and perhaps no writer of the day did so much in England to excite sympathy with the cause which ultimately proved victorious. Miss Martineau's "Biographical Sketches" were originally published in the Daily News, a journal to which she was for many years a regular contributor, and for which she wrote her own obituary notice. Her historical work is mere compilation, destitute alike of originality and thoroughness, and the greater part of her other work has proved to be ephemeral. Such tales, however, as "Deerbrook" and "The Hour and the Man" have still admiring readers. The publication of her "Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development" (1851) excited much controversy, although her fearless honesty won the respect even of her opponents.

A writer who distinguished himself most notably at one period by a combination of antagonism to Supernatural Christianity, and a gift for writing biography, was John Morley1838-. Mr Morley was born at Blackburn, and educated at Cheltenham and at Lincoln College, Oxford. Much of his work was done in journalism; he edited in succession the Morning Star, the Literary Gazette, the Fortnightly Review, the Pall Mall Gazette, and Macmillan's Magazine. He resigned the editorship of the Pall Mall Gazette in 1883, when he entered Parliament as member for Newcastle-on-Tyne, and he gave up his post on Macmillan's Magazine on entering a Liberal Cabinet in 1886. He still edits the "English Men of Letters Series," a remarkable collection of handy biographies, for which he wrote a "Life of Burke." His literary achievement, apart from his essays, is entirely biographical, but it was of enormous influence upon the intellectual development of thoughtful young men at the Universities during the seventies and eighties. He has written lives of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot, which throw much light on the period prior to the French Revolution, and give abundant evidence that, had he not devoted himself to politics he would have been able to produce a history of the French Revolution of inestimable value. On the other hand his "Life of Cobden" was a failure from a literary standpoint. The essay "On Compromise" is a most interesting development of the fundamental idea of Milton's "Areopagitica," and is probably the most exhaustive treatment of the question—how far we are justified in keeping back the expression of our opinions in deference to the views and customs of our fellow-men.

Another good biographer who gave up to Parliament time which might have been better employed, from the point of view of a lover of letters, is Sir George Otto Trevelyan1838-, whose life of his uncle, Lord Macaulay, is a delightful biography, full of entertainment for the most frivolous of readers. Not less entertaining is Sir George Trevelyan's "Early History of Charles James Fox" (1880), a book which makes one wish that the writer had devoted himself to that epoch of our history, and had done for the period of the Georges what his uncle had done for their immediate predecessors.

Lord Houghton1809-1885 wrote poetry as Richard Monckton Milnes, and his lines are still frequently quoted. But his biography of Keats—"Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats (1848)," although not now in any publisher's list, is certain to be long remembered. Lord Houghton's life was written by his friend, Sir Wemyss Reid, author also of a "Monograph on Charlotte BrontË." His son, after serving as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, became Earl of Crewe; his daughter, Florence Henniker, keeps alive the literary tradition of the family, and is known as a writer of short stories. Lord Houghton had a genuine love of letters and of the society of literary men. So also had Henry Crabb Robinson1775-1867, whose diary edited by Dr Sadler (1869) brings one in touch with all the literary men and women of the period. At his house in Russell Square Robinson gave breakfasts, to which it became a distinction to be invited. Samuel Rogers's1763-1855 breakfasts have been described in many memoirs. Rogers wrote all his poems long years before the Queen began to reign, but he lived for another thirty years with the reputation of a good conversationalist and story-teller. His "Table Talk" was published in 1856, and it is full of good stories. Two valuable books concerning Rogers have been written by Mr Peter William Clayden, "Early Life of Samuel Rogers," and "Rogers and His Contemporaries."

An important biography was written by James Spedding1810-1881, whose whole life was devoted to a study of Bacon, and to a thorough destruction of Macaulay's criticism upon the great philosopher. The "Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon, including all his Occasional Works, newly collected and set forth, with a Commentary Biographical and Historical," was published in seven volumes between 1857 and 1874.

Two of the most notable political philosophers of the era were George Cornewall Lewis and Bagehot. Sir George Lewis1806-1863 held important posts in the Governments of his day, being at one time Home Secretary and at another Secretary of State for War. He wrote "A Dialogue on the Best Form of Government" and many other treatises. Walter Bagehot1826-1877 was one of the greatest authorities of his day on banking and finance. He wrote "Physics and Politics," "Economic Studies," and several other works which have little relation to literature; but his "Literary Studies" indicated a critical acquaintance with the best books. A brilliant publicist of our day, who combines, like Bagehot, a love of affairs with keen literary instincts, is Goldwin Smith1823-, who has made his home in Toronto, Canada, for many years now, but who was once intimately associated with Oxford University. Goldwin Smith has written many books and pamphlets, one on "The Relations between England and America," another on "The Political Destiny of Canada," and he has written a short biography of Cowper.

The most famous traveller of the reign and one of our greatest men of letters was George Borrow1803-1881, who went to Spain as an agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Hence his "Bible in Spain," which has become one of the most popular books in our language as it is one of the most fascinating. It was first published in 1843 under the title "The Bible in Spain, or Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments of an Englishman in an attempt to circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula." "Lavengro" (1851) and "The Romany Rye" (1857) have enjoyed almost an equal popularity with "The Bible in Spain."

Herman Melville (1819-1891) was an American citizen, and his work, therefore, does not come within the scope of this volume. I am the more sorry for this, that I consider Melville's name is entitled to rank with that of George Borrow as one of the two travellers during the epoch whose books make literature. It is small disparagement to the majority of our great travellers that they have not been men of letters, that their books, although serviceable to their generation, are of little moment considered from the standpoint of art. Although Mr H. M. Stanley, Dr Nansen, and other adventurous spirits of our time, may be quite as important in the general drift of the world's doings as any of the literary men whose names are contained in this volume, their books have no place whatever in literature. It is noteworthy, however, that books written by travellers have been, during the past ten years or more, by far the most popular form of reading, apart from fiction. Interest in historical study and speculative writing seems to have declined; interest in travel is as marked as ever.

The journalism of the reign has been so intimately associated with literature that were my space more ample I should have chosen to devote a chapter to that subject alone. Many of the men I have mentioned, perhaps most of them, have at one time or another contributed to the journals or magazines of the day. Even the novelists have a peculiar interest in journalism, because of late years as large a proportion of their pecuniary reward has come from what is called serial publication in this or that magazine or newspaper as from book publication. Apart from fiction, access to magazines and newspapers has become, if it has not always been, an easy and pleasant way of making oneself heard upon the subject nearest to one's heart. Literary journalists, who have afterwards republished their contributions in volume form include Sydney Smith and John Wilson at the beginning of the reign; as also Douglas Jerrold, Mark Lemon, Edmund Yates, Charles Mackay, and George Augustus Sala. Sydney Smith1771-1845 left nothing that we can read to-day. He lives as a pleasant memory. We know that he must have been a liberal-minded, as he was certainly a very witty clergyman. He wrote on "The Ballot" in 1837 and on "The Church Bills" in 1838, and he went on writing zealously until his death. "The Wit and Wisdom of Sydney Smith" was published in 1861. John Wilson1785-1854 has a more purely literary record. As editor of Blackwood's Magazine, he made that publication a power in the land. His "Recreations of Christopher North" appeared in 1842. Many of his essays and sketches may still be read with real pleasure, and indeed his influence will be very much alive for many a year to come. Douglas Jerrold1803-1857 is also well known to-day by his "Black-eyed Susan" and "Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures." His son, Blanchard Jerrold (1826-1884), wrote his life. Mark Lemon1809-1870 was one of the first editors of Punch newspaper. His hundreds of articles and many novels are all well nigh forgotten, but his name will always receive honourable mention in the history of journalism. Edmund Yates1831-1894, who founded The World newspaper in 1874, will be remembered by his well written "Autobiography"—one of the best books of the kind ever issued. Yates wrote many novels, but they have all passed out of memory. Charles Mackay1814-1889 was an active journalist for a number of years. He wrote novels, poems, and criticisms, and an entertaining autobiography entitled "Forty Years' Recollections of Life, Literature, and Public Affairs." Dr Mackay was father of Eric Mackay, author of "Love Letters of a Violinist," and stepfather of Miss Marie Corelli the novelist. George Augustus Sala1828-1895, who wrote so continuously for the Daily Telegraph and other journals, was also author of many books as well as the inevitable autobiography. "The Land of the Golden Fleece," "America Revisited," and "Living London" are well known. Richard Jefferies1848-1887 published his "Gamekeeper at Home" in the Pall Mall Gazette. "Wood Magic" (1881), "Bevis" (1882), and "The Story of My Heart" (1883), are his best books.

These names suggest a hundred others. The most honoured journalist of to-day is Frederick Greenwood (1830- ), who has edited "The Cornhill Magazine" and more than one newspaper. He has written poems, stories, and essays, his "Lover's Lexicon" and "Dreams" being two of his latest volumes.

Another editor of The Cornhill Magazine, James Payn (1830- ), has written many successful novels, of which "Lost Sir Massingberd" (1864) and "By Proxy" (1878) are perhaps the most popular. Mr Payn's many accomplishments, his delightful humour and gift of genial anecdote, have endeared him to a wide circle.

A journalist of equal distinction was Richard Holt Hutton1826-1897, the editor of the Spectator, who in that journal maintained for thirty-five years the high-water mark of dignified and independent criticism, in an age in which the extensive intercourse of authors and critics, the constant communication between the writers of books and the writers for newspapers, has made independent criticism a difficult, and, indeed, almost impossible achievement. Mr Hutton wrote many books, two of the most notable being "Essays Literary and Speculative," which were full of thoughtful and discerning estimates of the works of Wordsworth, George Eliot, and other writers.

Memoirs abound in the epoch, although we are mainly indebted to translations. Amiel's "Journal," translated by Mrs Humphry Ward, "Marie Bashkirtseff's Diary," translated by Mathilde Blind, reflect one side of this literary taste; while the thousand and one memoirs concerning Napoleon I. represents another. The most popular series of political memoirs in English we owed to Charles Cavendish Fulke Greville1794-1865, who became Clerk to the Privy Council in 1821, and held that post until 1860. After his death his diary was edited by Mr Henry Reeve. The first series of the "Greville Memoirs" dealing with the reign of George IV. and William IV., appeared in 1875 and created immense excitement.[19] The later volumes excited less interest.

"The Life of the late Prince Consort" (1874) by Sir Theodore Martin1816-, naturally contained no indiscretions although it did much to enhance, if that were possible, kindly memories of the Queen's husband. Sir Theodore Martin made his first fame under the pseudonym of Bon Gaultier. His "Book of Ballads," written in conjunction with Professor Aytoun, had much success. Sir Theodore Martin also wrote Aytoun's "Memoir" (1867), and "The Life of Lord Lyndhurst" (1883). He has translated the Odes of Horace, "The Vita Nuova" of Dante, Goethe's "Faust," and Heine's "Poems and Ballads." In 1885 he published a "Sketch of the Life of Princess Alice."

It is difficult to know where to place Sir Arthur Helps1817-1875, who wrote plays, novels, histories, and essays. He was an overrated writer in his time. He is perhaps underrated now. Two series of "Friends in Council" appeared, the first in 1847, the second in 1859. They dealt with all manner of abstract subjects, such as "war," "despotism," and so on, and were very popular. Another volume, "Companions of my Solitude," was equally successful. Helps was rash enough to enter into competition with Prescott in treating of the Spanish Conquest of America; but the picturesque books of the earlier writer are still with us while Helps's "Life of Pizarro" (1869) and "Life of Cortes" (1871) are almost forgotten. That also is the fate of his romance, "Realmah" (1868) and of his tragedies, "Catherine Douglas" and "Henry II." Sir Arthur Helps was Clerk to the Privy Council, and he edited the "Principal Speeches and Addresses of the late Prince Consort" (1862).

Sir Arthur Helps also edited for Queen Victoria1819- her "Leaves from a Journal of our Life in the Highlands" (1868). The Queen has also published "The Early Days of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort" (1867), and "More Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands" (1884).

Her Majesty has been credited with a genuine taste for letters, and a love for good poetry and good fiction. With some show of authority it has been stated that her favourite novelists are Sir Walter Scott, Miss Austen, and Miss BrontË; while it is quite evident to the least inquisitive that many literary theologians have had some measure of her regard. Happily the times have long passed when literature needed the patronage of the powerful. To-day it can honourably stand alone. But it is pleasing to remember that the sovereign whose sixty years of rule make so remarkable a record in literature, as in many other aspects of the world's progress, has taken a sympathetic interest in the books and bookmen of the epoch.

The Queen will have seen reputations blaze forth and flicker out ignominiously; she will have seen many a writer hailed for immortal to-day and forgotten to-morrow. She will have seen, however, a succession of writers, Browning and Tennyson, Carlyle and Ruskin, most notable of all, who in their impulse towards high ideals of human brotherhood, in their enthusiasm of humanity, have given us a literature without a parallel in history; and she will not be without a sense of gratification that that literature will go down the ages bearing the name of Victorian.