There is no better example of the closeness of the connection between society and its literature than is supplied by the novel. Every change in the public taste has been followed by a corresponding variety of fiction, until it is difficult to enumerate all the schools into which novelists have divided themselves. During the present century, life has become far more complex and the reading public far more exacting, varied, and extended than ever before. Steam and electricity have brought distant countries into close communion, and have awakened a feeling of fellowship among the different nations of the civilised world which has greatly widened the horizon of human interests. The spread of education, the increase and distribution of wealth, together with the cheapness of printing, have largely increased the number and variety of those who seek entertainment from works of fiction. The novel-reader is no longer content with the description of scenes and characters among which his own life is passed. He wishes to be introduced to foreign countries, to past ages, and to societies and ranks apart from his own. He wishes also to find in fiction the reflection of his own tastes and the discussion of his own interests. He seeks psychology, or study of character, or the excitement of a complicated plot, or the details and events of sea-faring, criminal, or fashionable life. All of these different tastes the novelist has undertaken to gratify. Under the extensive head of the novel of life and manners, the habits, modes of thought, and peculiarities of language of Scotland, Ireland, England, and the United States, with many sub-divisions of provinces and cities, have been studied and described. The novelist has extended his investigations into Eastern countries, and has portrayed the customs and institutions of Oriental life. He has taken his characters from historic times, and has recommended the past for the instruction or amusement of the present. The experience of the soldier and the sailor have taken their place among the incidents of fiction; the adventures and crimes of blacklegs and convicts have been drawn upon to gratify palates sated with the weak _pabulum_ of the fashionable novel. Fiction has not been confined to the study of manners and character, but has been extensively used to propagate opinions and to argue causes. Novels have been written in support of religious views, Catholic, High-Church, and Low-Church; political novels have supported the interests of Tory, Whig, anti-slavery, and civil service; philosophical novels have exposed the evils of society as at present constituted, and have built up impossible utopias. Besides the novel of purpose, there has been the novel of fancy, in which the imagination has been allowed to soar unchecked in the regions of the unreal and the supernatural.