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took rank at once among the first novelists of the age. Her other works, if not equal to Jane Eyre, are still of great merit, and deal profoundly with the springs of human action. They are: The Professor, Villette, and Shirley. Her characters are portraits of the men and women around her, painted from life; and she speaks boldly of motives and customs which other novelists have touched very delicately. She had two gifted sisters, who were also successful novelists; but who died young. Miss Bronté died a short time after her marriage to Mr. Nichol, her father's curate. Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell, her near friend, and the author of a successful novel called Mary Barton, has written an interesting biography of Mrs. Nichol,

George Eliot, born 1820: under this pseudonym, Miss Evans has written several works of great interest. Among these are: Adam Bede; The Mill on the Floss; Romola, an Italian story; Felix Holt; and Silas Marner. Simple, and yet eminently dramatic in scene, character, and interlocution, George Eliot has painted pictures from middle and common life, and is thus the exponent of a large humanity. She is now the wife of the popular author, G. H. Lewes.

Dinah Maria Muloch (Mrs. Craik), born 1826: a versatile writer. She is best known by her novels entitled John Halifax and The Ogilvies. Wilkie Collins, born 1824: he is the son of a landscape-painter, and is renowned for his curious and well-concealed plots, phantom-like characters, and striking effects. Among his novels the best known are: Antonina, The Dead Secret, The Woman in White, No Name, Armadale, The Moonstone, and Man and Wife. There is a sameness in these works; and yet it is evident that the author has put his invention on the rack to create new intrigues, and to mystify his reader from the beginning to the end of each story. Charles Reade, born 1814: he is one of the most prolific writers of the day, as well as one of the most readable in all that he has written. He draws many impassioned scenes, and is as sensuous in literature as Rubens in art. Among his principal works are: White Lies, Love Me Little, Love Me Long; The Cloister and The Hearth; Hard Cash, and Griffith Gaunt, which convey little, if any, practical instruction. His Never Too Late to Mend is of great value in displaying the abuses of the prison system in England; and his Put Yourself in His Place is a very powerful attack upon the Trades' Unions. A singular epigrammatic style keeps up the interest apart from the story.

Mary Russell Mitford, 1786-1855: she was a poet and a dramatist, but is chiefly known by her stories. In the collection called Our Vil

lage, she has presented beautiful and simple pictures of English country life which are at once touching and instructive.

Charlotte Mary Yonge, born 1823: among the many interesting works

of this author, The Heir of Redclyff is the first and best. This was followed by Daisy Chain, Heartsease, The Clever Woman of the Family, and numerous other works of romance and of history, all of which are valuable for their high tone of moral instruction and social manners.

Anthony Trollope, born 1815: he and his brother, Thomas Adolphus Trollope, are sons of that Mrs. Frances Trollope who abused our country in her work entitled The Domestic Manners of the Americans, in terms that were distasteful even to English critics. Anthony Trollope is a successful writer of society-novels, which, without being of the highest order, are faithful in their portraitures. Among those which have been very popular are: Barchester Towers, Framley Parsonage, Doctor Thorne, and Orley Farm. He travelled in the United States, and has published a work of discernment entitled North America. His brother Thomas is best known by his History of Florence to the Fall of the Republic.

Thomas Hughes, born 1823: the popular author of Tom Brown's SchoolDays at Rugby, and Tom Brown at Oxford, — books which display the workings of these institutions, and set up a standard for English youth. The first is the best, and has made him famous.

WRITERS ON SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY.

Although these do not come strictly within the scope of English literature, they are so connected with it in the composition of general culture, and give such a complexion to the age, that it is well to mention the principal names.

Sir William Hamilton, 1788–1856: for twenty years Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh. His voluminous lectures on both these subjects were edited, after his death, by Mansel and Veitch, and have been since of the highest authority. William Whewell, 1795-1866: for some time Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He has written learnedly on many subjects: his most valuable works are: A History of the Inductive Sciences, The Elements of Morality, and The Plurality of Worlds. Of Whewell it has been pithily said, that "science was his forte, and omniscience his foible."

Richard Whately, D.D., 1787-1863: he was appointed in 1831 Arch

bishop of Dublin and Kildare, in Ireland. His chief works are: Elements of Logic, Elements of Rhetoric, and Lectures on Political Economy. He gave a new impetus to the study of Logic and Rhetoric, and presented the formal logic of Aristotle anew to the world; thus marking a distinct epoch in the history of that much controverted science. John Ruskin, born 1819: he ranks among the most original critics in art; but is eccentric in his opinions. His powers were first displayed in his Modern Painters. In his Seven Lamps of Architecture he has laid down the great fundamental principles of that art, among the forms of which the Gothic claims the pre-eminence. These are further carried out in The Stones of Venice. He is a transcendentalist and a preRaphaelite, and exceedingly dogmatic in stating his views. His descriptive powers are very great.

Hugh Miller, 1802-1856: an uneducated mechanic, he was a brilliant genius and an observant philosopher. His best works are: The Old Red Sandstone, Footprints of the Creator, and The Testimonies of the Rocks. He shot himself in a fit of insanity.

John Stuart Mill, born 1806: the son of James Mill, the historian of India. He was carefully educated, and has written on many subjects. He is best known by his System of Logic; his work on Political Economy; and his Treatise on Liberty. Each of these topics being questions of controversy, Mr. Mill states his views strongly in respect to opposing systems, and is very clear in the expression of his own dogmas. Thomas Chalmers, D. D., 1780-1847: this distinguished divine won his greatest reputation as an eloquent preacher. He was for some time Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of St. Andrew's, and wrote on Natural Theology, The Evidences of Christianity, and some lectures on Astronomy. But all his works are glowing sermons rather than philosophical treatises.

Richard Chevenix Trench, D. D., born 1807: the present Archbishop of Dublin. He has written numerous theological works of popular value, among which are Notes on the Parables, and on Miracles. He has also published two series of charming lectures on English philology, entitled The Study of Words and English Past and Present. They are suggestive and discursive rather than philosophical, but have incited many persons to pursue this delightful study.

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., born 1815: Dean of Westminster. He was first known by his excellent biography of Dr. Arnold of Rugby; but has since enriched biblical literature by his lectures on The Eastern Church and on The Jewish Church. He accompanied the Prince of

Wales on his visit to Palestine, and was not only eager in collecting statistics, but has reproduced them with poetic power.

Nicholas Wiseman, D.D., 1802-1865: the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England. Cardinal Wiseman has written much on theological and ecclesiastical questions; but he is best known to the literary world by his able lectures on The Connection between Science and Revealed Religion, which are additionally valuable because they have no

sectarian character.

Charles Darwin, born 1809: although he began his career at an early age, his principal works are so immediately of the present time, and his speculations are so involved in serious controversies, that they are not within the scope of this work. His principal works are: The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, and The Descent of Man. His facts are curious and very carefully selected; but his conclusions have been severely criticized.

Frederick Max Müller, born 1823: a German by birth. He is a professional Oxford, and has done more to popularize the Science of Language than any other writer. He has written largely on Oriental linguistics, and has given two courses of lectures on The Science of Language, which have been published, and are used as text-books. His Chips from a German Workshop is a charming book, containing his miscellaneous articles in reviews and magazines.

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ROMAN NEWS LETTERS. - English serials and periodicals, from the very time of their origin, display, in a remarkable manner, the progress both of English literature and of English history, and form the most striking illustration that the literature interprets the history. In using the caption, “journalism," we include all forms of periodical literature-reviews, magazines, weekly and daily papers. The word journalism is, in respect to many of them, a misnomer, etymologically considered it is a French corruption of diurnal, which, from the Latin dies, should mean a daily paper; but it is now generally used to include all periodicals. The origin of newspapers is quite curious, and antedates the invention of printing. The acta diurna, or journals of public events, were the daily manuscript reports of the Roman Government during the later commonwealth. In these, among other matters of public interest, every birth, marriage, and divorce was entered. As an illustration of the character of these brief entries, we have the satire of Petronius, which he puts in the mouth of the freedman Trimalchio: "The seventh of the Kalends of Sextilis, on the estate at Cumæ, were born thirty boys, twenty girls; were carried from the floor to the barn, 500,000 bushels of wheat; were broke 500 oxen. The same day the slave Mithridates was crucified for blasphemy against the Emperor's genius; the same day was placed in the chest

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