imagination of the old German ballads and legends. This took a more lasting hold on English literature, and found expression in one of our greatest English romance writers, Sir Walter Scott. We include him among the prose writers, because by far the larger number of his romances are in prose, and though some are metrical, the difference is one of outward form rather than of substance. Walter Scott was

born in Edinburgh on the same day as Napoleon I., the 15th of August, 1771. When he was three years old he became lame, and, being unable to run about like other children, amused himself in reading fairy-stories, old Scotch ballads, histories, and legends of the past. His imagination was constantly in exercise, and he lived in a very world of romance. If he saw an old castle or battle-field, he at once filled it with all the living characters of the old world; and delighted his companions with stories of barons and knights and ladies of the days of chivalry.

He was brought up as a lawyer, but took little interest in his profession. He translated German ballads; and in 1805 he published a metrical romance of his own, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel." This was followed in 1808 by "Marmion, a tale of Flodden Field;" in 1810 by "The Lady of the Lake;" and then two years afterwards by "Rokeby." These metrical romances were necessarily short, and by the nature of their construction gave little scope for description or delineation of character, and Scott now felt his powers in both of these; so in 1814 he published a prose romance, "Waverley," a story of the last attempt of the Stuarts to regain the throne of England. It gave a bright picture of the life in Scotland at that time, conceived with the power and vividness of true genius, and drawn with the skill of a practised artist. It had a great success, though it was published anonymously. "Waverley" was the first of a series of twenty-eight romances, called the "Waverley Novels," each of them illustrating human life

in bygone times of special interest: such as the time of the Crusades in "Ivanhoe" and the "Talisman," the reign of Queen Elizabeth in "Kenilworth," the days of the Covenanters in "Old Mortality," and of the civil war in "Woodstock." These romances carried the imagination into the life of the past, and quickened its power, while they enlarged the range of sympathy, or the imagination of the heart, by enabling men and women of the nineteenth century to enter into the feelings of persons living in ages remote from the present and under very different conditions.

Walter Scott's own life had much of the heroic in it; and he fought his battle among nineteenth century realities as bravely, and with as fine a sense of honour, as any knight in his own romances of the days of chivalry. His writings brought him in considerable wealth, and he had great delight in spending a part of this in building for himself a mansion at Abbotsford in the old Gothic style; but the expense of this was greater than he had calculated. Then he became involved in the business transactions of his publisher; and at last the publishing house failed, and Sir Walter Scott became responsible for his share of the debts. He would not, however, allow himself to be made a bankrupt, and thus freed from his liabilities, but he determined to pay his creditors, if possible, everything in full. He went into a small lodging in Edinburgh, and set to work to earn money enough to pay the whole debt. This was in 1825; five years afterwards, in 1830, he had paid a considerable portion of the amount, and still he struggled on bravely; but he was becoming weakened by intense strain, and before the close of the year he was attacked by apoplexy. He fought against ill-health and failing power a little longer, until his physicians ordered him to travel abroad, and to give up all mental work. He went on the Continent, but as he was coming down the Rhine he was seized with paralysis. He recovered sufficiently to be able to return to

his much-loved Abbotsford, and there, with his family around him, and his favourite dogs at his feet, he died, on the 21st of September, 1831.

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Sir Walter Scott once said "that he had taught many ladies and gentlemen to write romances as well, or nearly as well, as himself." Even in his own lifetime, and afterwards, he had many followers, who wrote stories of the past, and gratified the taste for romance literature with its free play of the imagination. At the same time, the love of simplicity and reality, which we have noticed as one of the features of the Revolution era, found expression in prose as well as in poetry. Whilst Scott was writing his metrical and prose romances of the past, Jane Austen, the daughter of a clergyman, was writing, in a quiet country parsonage at Steventon, stories of every-day life in the present, and winning sympathy for just the nineteenth century men and women she saw in the common world around her. showed in her stories, as Wordsworth did in the "Lyrical Ballads," that it is not the outside show and pomp of life which is the source of its poetry. Even the petty doings of a country town have in them the same elements as a great drama, only it requires a delicate and discerning eye to see them. Jane Austen had just this fine perception of the poetry and humour in "the daily round and common task;" and, like Wordsworth again, she made her readers feel that "the humblest flower that blows" may give "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." As we pass on into the deepening earnestness of the time, we find the love of truth and simplicity joined with some serious purpose in all the best imaginative literature of the century. Our three greatest novelists, Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, and George Eliot, though no longer living, scarcely yet belong to history, but we may notice how they carried on the work of the time. In all the writings of Dickens we find that wide, largehearted sympathy with humanity, and care for the individual,

which belong to the century following the French Revolution. He takes his characters from the class the most familiar with the realities of life, the most free from artificial sentiment and the restraints of society; and he shows us human nature in its truth and simplicity. At the same time that we are feeling how "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin," he calls our attention to some form of wrong or neglect which is oppressing or dealing hardly with some of our fellow-creatures. It is the neglect of the poor children of the gutters and alleys, or the tyranny of the Yorkshire schools, or the ill-treatment of the sick by ignorant, vulgar nurses, which fills his heart as he writes, and it is this serious purpose which has made his stories so rich in practical results. The laughter and the tears may be soon over, but the conviction remains that something must be done to undo the wrong, and to bring help to those who have had no helper.

Thackeray, the comrade of Dickens, working by his side, has in his novels striven to show how society decays when it becomes insincere and given over to petty ambitions; he works out the hope of the French Revolution, which aimed at the regeneration of society by a return to simplicity and honesty as the true principles of our common life.

Later on still, George Eliot teaches the grand lesson of a high spiritual ideal set before us, to which even the feeblest may aspire, and which, if worked out faithfully, will enrich and bless the poorest, barest existence.

The recognition of the right of a larger part of the nation to a voice in its government produced the Reform Bill, and with this sprang up a new class of literature, intended for the enlightenment and elevation of those who had neither time nor money for big books.

The writing of short, clear papers on various subjects for magazines led to the rise of a new school of essayists. Amongst these Charles Lamb, Hazlitt, and De Quincey

were the chief. One of the greatest prose writers of our century, Thomas Carlyle, has so lately passed away from us that he cannot yet be said to have a place in the history of our English literature; and yet, if future generations estimate his work aright, he will have a conspicuous position among those who have left a deep mark upon his age. He rests from his labours, but his works will long live, not only in his own writings, but in the love of truth and hatred of all false appearances with which he has inspired others. He opened men's eyes to the world they were living in, and, in many cases, to the lives they were living in it. He showed us that to work aright we must fight, not as one that beateth the air, nor as one living in a dream of empty shadows and sentimentalities; but steadfastly and manfully, living in perpetual conflict with the real evils around us and within us, and patiently fulfilling the simple, plain duty which lies before us. He felt intensely the responsibility of each individual in regard to his own part in life, and the weakness and danger that lie in trusting to plans and theories for the improvement of the world instead of to the upward growth and faithful work of each one. Like Wordsworth, Carlyle saw that this was the great lesson of the past and the only hope of the future.

The spread of intelligence and education have brought a large number of workers into the field of English literature at the present time; and this century has already produced much good writing. Many of these writers are not seeking fame, but their work will live in human progress, and in the improved conditions of human life, though their names may not have a place in the future story of English Literature. Others there are whose writings will one day be a part of the great heritage handed down from the past to posterity.

We have seen what the great men of every age have done for us, in helping us to form a pure and noble ideal of what man may be and do, both in their writings and their

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