left no equals, but the combined force of his successors has been constantly growing in practical effect. They have probably done more than the journalists to produce that improvement in the organisation of modern life which leads to the notion that, because social grievances are less obvious, they have ceased to exist. The novelist catches the cry of suffering before it has obtained the strength, or general recognition, which are pre-supposed when the newspaper becomes its mouthpiece. The miseries of the marriage-market had been told by Thackeray, with almost wearisome iteration, many years before they found utterance in the columns of the "Times." FOOTNOTE: [22] "Or" in Green's text. C. A CREATOR OF PUBLIC SENTIMENT 25. It may indeed be truly said that, after all, human selfishness is much the same as it ever was; that luxury still drowns sympathy; that riches and poverty have still their old estranging influence. The novel, as has been shown, cannot give a new birth to the spirit, or initiate the effort to transcend the separations of place and circumstance; but it is no small thing that it should remove the barriers of ignorance and antipathy which would otherwise render the effort unavailing. It at least brings man nearer to his neighbor, and enables each class to see itself as others see it. And from the fusion of opinions and sympathies thus produced, a general sentiment is elicited, to which oppression of any kind, whether of one class by another, or of individuals by the tyranny of sectarian custom, seldom appeals in vain. D. A LEVELLER OF INTELLECTS