Marriage of the Queen to her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 1840.

principles of evolution and biological discoveries. Antagonistic in tendency to these sensationalists in many points is a class of thinkers who are followers of the spiritualistic philosophy imported from Germany into England by Coleridge: such are William Lecky (b. 1838) and John Maurice (b. 1805).

This great scientific movement received its impulse from Germany, the home of the most scientific of nations. As in that country, Science has been exalted into a kind of supreme court, before which all traditions and institutions, all established creeds and dogmas, even sacred texts, have been summoned to be tested and to have judgment pronounced upon them. The influence of this scientific spirit is perceptible in all departments of literature-in Fiction, in History, in Criticism, and in Poetry. Tennyson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning frequently allude to Science and its speculations, while Robert Browning's work is profoundly psychological.

The practical tendencies of the Victorian Age are, without question, unfavorable to the poets; and the existing relations between poetry and science have been conspicuously dwelt upon by E. C. Stedman in his "Victorian Poets:" "It follows that, in any discussion of the recent era, the scientific movement which has engrossed men's thoughts, and so radically affected their spiritual and material lives, assumes an importance equal to that of all other forces combined. The time has been marked by a stress of scientific iconoclasm. Its bearing upon theology was long since perceived, and the so-called conflict of Science with Religion is now at its full height. Its bearing upon poetry, through antagonism to the traditional basis of poetic diction, imagery, and thought, has been less distinctly stated. | The stress has been vaguely felt by the poets themselves, but they are not given to formulating their sensations in the polemical manner of those trained logicians, the churchmen; and the attitude of the latter has so occupied our regard that few have paused to consider the real cause of the technical excellence and spiritual barrenness common in the modern arts of letters and design. Yet it is impossible, when we once set about it, to look over the field of late English verse and not to see a question of the relations between Poetry and Science pressing for consideration at every turn and outpost. Scientific iconoclasm is here mentioned simply as an existing force; not as one to be deplored, for I have faith that it will in the end lead to new and fairer manifestations of the immortal, Muse.

However irrepressible the conflict between accepted theologies and the spirit of investigation, however numerous the traditions of faith that yield to the advances of knowledge, there is no such inherent antagonism between Science and Poetry. In fact, the new light of truth is no more at war with religious aspiration than with poetic feeling, but in either case with the ancient fables and follies of expression which these sentiments respectively have cherished.

..

The truth is that our school-girls and spinsters wander down the lanes with Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer under their arms; or, if they carry Tennyson, Longfellow, and Morris, Agitations in read them in the light of spectrum analysis, or test them by the economics of Mill and Bain. The very tendency of modern poetry to wreak its thoughts upon expression, of which Huxley so complains, naturally follows the icono

Ireland (18411843) under Daniel O'Connell.

Passage of the Copyright Bill in 1842, by which authors were given the exclusive right of publishing for forty-two years; and if alive at the expiration of that period till death; after

clastic overthrow of its cherished ideals, confining it to skilful utilization of the laws of form and melody.... The more intellectual will confess to you that they weary less of a new essay by Proctor or Tyndall than of the latest admirable poem; that overpowered in the brilliant presence of scientific discovery, their own conceptions seem less dazzling. A thirst for

more facts grows upon them; they throw aside which the right their lyres and renew the fascinating study,

joyed by their heirs or assignees for seven years. The previous Law of Copyright, by which the liberty of reprinting was secured to the

forgetful that the inspiration of Plato, Shakespeare, and other poets of old, often foreshadowed the glory of these revelations, and neglecting to chant in turn the transcendent possibilities of eras yet to come. Science, the modern author and his Circe, beguiles them from their voyage to the Hesperides, and transforms them into her voiceless devotees. Every period, however original and creative, has a transitional aspect in its relation to the years before and after. In scientific iconoclasm, then, we have the most important of the symptoms which mark the recent era as a transition period, and presently shall observe features in the structure and composition of its poetry which justify us in thus ranking it. The Victorian poets have flourished in an equatorial region of common-sense and demonstrable knowledge. Thought has outlived

assigns only for twenty-eight years after publication, and if the author be living at the close of that period for the remainder of his life, was unjust to literary men, and a movement for its extension was made in 1837 by Mr. S. Talfourd in the House of Commons. Nothing was done immediately, however, towards an amendment.

A few petitions its childhood, yet has not reached a growth

were handed in-one by Thomas Car

lyle, in 1839. At length, after much discussion in Parlia

from which experience and reason lead to visions more radiant than the early intuitions. The zone of youthful fancy, excited by unquestion

ment, in which ing acceptance of outward phenomena, is now

the bill was strenuously opposed by Lord Macaulay, it was passed.

well passed; the zone of cultured imagination is still beyond us. At present scepticism, analysis, scientific conquest, realism, scornful unrest. Apollo has left the heavens. The modern child knows more than the sage of antiquity."

UNIVERSALITY OF THE NOVEL. THACKERAY, DICKENS,

GEORGE ELIOT.

The most prolific branch of literature in the Victorian Age is that of prose fiction. The novel has furnished domestic amusement to all classes-the wealthy preferring it to the theatre, while cheap editions have placed it within reach of the most humble. The distinguishing features of this fiction are its careful avoidance of anachronisms, its naturalness, its democratic spirit, and its didacticism - characteristics resulting from the literary revolution in the early part of the century, and from the scientific and practical spirit of the age. Novelists have familiarized themselves with the customs, habits, dress, and even thoughts of an epoch before venturing to make it the background of their historical romances; their fictions are life-pictures of society, instead of dull narratives like those of Richardson and Fielding; their characters possess souls and consciences, and are constructed on psychological principles; the characteristic relations of rich and poor, learned and ignorant, wise and foolish, virtuous and vicious, are kept by them constantly in view; and finally the average novel, while furnishing entertainment, contains also some moral principles or social aims which cannot but have a salutary effect on the mind of the reader. Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the greater portion of whose novels belongs to the decade 1827-1837, may be said to link together Victorian fiction and that of the preceding age. His later works are more ethically truthful - particularly his celebrated novel "The Caxtons." He is the English love-novelist-surpassing all others in the portrayal of the passion of love. The found

Completion of
Tunnel, under

the Thames

the management of the distinguished

engineer, Sir Kingdom Bru

er of the didactic novel was Harriet Martineau (1802-1876), whose aim in her popular tales was to inculcate the principles of Political Economy. Her novels, professedly based upon Science, became very popular, and were a departure from the ordinary road of fiction. It would be impracticable to enumerate here all the novelists

Establishment of the North British Re

view, 1844: of of the Victorian Age; but there are three writ

the British Quarterly Review, 1845; and the New Quarterly Review, 1852.

War with
China. The
real cause of
this war was
the importation
of opium by
English mer-
chants in direct
opposition to
the Chinese
government.
A treaty was
made in 1842,

by which China

ceded Hong

Kong and paid

$21,000,000 to Great Britain, at the same time opening five seaports to British commerce.

ers whose unrivalled excellence requires special notice in any discussion of the English school of novelists - William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), Charles Dickens (1812-1870), and George Eliot-Mrs. G. H. Lewes-(1820-1880).

Thackeray and Dickens were consummate satirists, and, in their fields of labor, the complements of each other-the former seeking his materials in the club or the drawing-room, the latter in the middle and lower walks of life, the prisons and reformatories. The power of the first lay in his recognition of society shams and the vulgarity of snobs; the power of the second lay in his detection of human eccentricities, and in his hatred of avarice and injustice. The novels of the former are for the most part expositions of some social theme or moral; those of the latter are generally distinguished as having some object of philanthropy or reform. Thackeray's masterpiece is "Vanity Fair" (1846-1848), remarkable for its subtle analysis of character; Dickens's is "David Copperfield" (1849-1850), unequalled in minute and passionate description, in pathos, and in Christian sentiment. Thackeray is perhaps the profoundest of English novelists; Dickens the most popular. The literary careers of these brilliant compeers in genius, and for many years intimate friends, seem almost exact counterparts. "We may form an exact idea of English taste," remarks