scenes. But all have been produced out of the same close observation, the same ability to seize upon the picturesque in art or in nature, and, above all, the same humour-that quality which can only be traced in writers of the highest mark.

Fiction now occupies so large a share of the commerce of literature that I may be excused for having almost exclusively dwelt upon the novelwriters, as the most prominent amongst the present race of distinguished authors. It will scarcely be necessary for me to attempt more than a brief mention of a few amongst the many who, since my notice in the previous pages of this volume, have most commanded the public attention.

It appeared like a heresy when John Ruskin, in 1843, entered the lists of Art-criticism with a sort of challenge to all comers. "Modern Painters, their superiority in the Art of Landscape-painting to all the ancient Masters," was a bold proclamation for a graduate of Oxford, twenty-four years of age. Characterised by equal self-reliance was his "Lamps of Architecture," which appeared six years later. But the mere assertion of peculiar opinions would not have secured Mr. Ruskin his great reputation, had it not been accompanied by a power of eloquent and picturesque writing, of which very few of his contemporaries, in any forms of composition, have an equal command. He unquestionably lifted Artcriticism out of the region of pedantic rules, and caused many to think that Reynolds did exceeding well when he turned his deafest ear to the artcritics of his time:

"When they talk'd of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff, 'He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff."

Mr. Ruskin has a host of disciples, and possibly also an equal number of unbelievers in him. So it is with another of our most original thinkers, in a very different walk. John Stuart Mill has, to a great extent, revolutionised our political economy. He has done, upon scientific principles, what writers of fiction have been labouring, not unworthily, to accomplish by one-sided pictures of individual suffering from the unequal distribution of wealth. Mr. Mill has indicated the way by which the claims of capital and labour, too long conflicting, may be ultimately reconciled, by the participation of those who ostensibly are non-capitalists in the profits of well-directed labour. A survey of the present state of industrial society amongst us, compared with what it was even ten years ago, will show the strides that have been making, under disadvantageous circumstances, by direct co-operation, and by that modified form of the same principle, which is now so familiar to us as Limited Liability. The old race of Political Economists with one of the most acute and orthodox of their leaders--Mr. M'Culloch-are distinctly opposed to these innovations, once considered so chimerical, and now, in their realization, held to be so dangerous.

The Historians are a numerous band. In Ancient History, Thirlwall, by his eloquent style and felicity of illustration, is deservedly popular; Grote, by his unswerving determination to work out the importance of the democratic principle in the most intellectual community of the Old World, has thoroughly routed the old believers in Mitford's aristocratic views, if any such remain. The writers of Modern History have, for the most part, devoted themselves to special

periods of our own or of foreign annals. Macaulay's great work, unprecedented in popularity, is essentially a history of the expulsion of the Stuarts. Mr. Froude's History of England from the Fall of Wolsey, is essentially a history of the growth and progress of Protestantism amongst us. The genius of the writer, his beauty of style, his vivid descriptions, have concealed what to many appear his one-sided estimate of character, and his paradoxical assertion of principles upon which subjects may be drilled into loyalty, and the adverse elements of a State made compact and firm by the pressure of authority. But with these possible defects, it cannot be denied that Mr. Froude has attained a mastery over facts imperfectly known, and has rendered them more interesting by lucid arrangement and picturesque description. I should occupy too much of this very imperfect sketch of our current literature, if I were to make the briefest mention of the authors of the semihistorical works, which take the shape of Biographies, political, literary, or artistical.

It must not be inferred that the few eminent writers I have mentioned, are representatives of the numerous departments of knowledge which give its continued and increasing activity to the Book-trade of this country. As a Note to this chapter, I subjoin an estimate made by me, upon data furnished by the "London Catalogue," 1816 to 1851, and the "Annual Catalogue" of 1853, of the number of new books published, and the nature of the subjects which they embraced. The books on Divinity were more than four-tenths of the entire number of new publications; those of Law and Medicine were one-tenth thereof; Science, Arts, and Industry, two-tenths; school-books

and juvenile books, one-tenth. Thus eight-tenths of the whole publications of a given period are not the sort of reading which constitutes what is called Popular Literature-the Literature of Book Clubs, Circulating Libraries, and Collections. History, Biography, Travels, Novels, and Poetry, furnish the ordinary Miscellaneous Reading of our population. There are works in the class of Divinity, such as Dr. Milman's Ecclesiastical Histories, which really belong to the general Literature which no educated reader can neglect. There are works of Science, such as those of Sir Charles Lyell and Hugh Miller in Geology, which have some of the fascination of what is ordinarily termed light reading. Sir John Herschel's "Discourses on the Study of Natural Philosophy" is a model for writers who desire to present Science in the most attractive garb. There is no want of the more nourishing aliment, as well as the most palatable, which the modern Press offers to unvitiated appetites.

VOL. III.

NOTE TO CHAPTER IX.

[EXTRACT FROM "THE MODERN PRESS," 1854.]

"THE London Catalogue of Books published in Great Britain, 1816 to 1851," furnishes, in its alphabetical list, with "sizes, prices, and publishers' names," that insight into the character and extent of the literature of a generation which we cannot derive from any other source.

Every book in this "London Catalogue" occupies a single line. There are 72 lines in a page; there are 626 pages. It follows that the Catalogue contains the titles of 45,072 books. In these 36 years, then, there was an average annual publication of 1252 books. This number is more than double the average of the period from 1800 to 1827. There is also published, by the proprietor of "The London Catalogue," an Annual Catalogue of New Books. From two of these catalogues we derive the following comparative results for the beginning and the end of a quarter of a century :

1828. Total cost of one set of the new publications

842

2530

1105

2934

£668 10 0

1058 17 9

0 16 0

084

1853. 1828. Average price per volume of the new publications 0 12 1 1853.

07 21

Such calculations are not arrived at without the labour of many hours; but the labour is not ill-bestowed by us, for they afford better data for opinion than loose talk about the