_George Berkeley_, 1684-1753: he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and soon engaged in metaphysical controversy. In 1724 he was made Dean of Derry, and in 1734, Bishop of Cloyne. A man of great philanthropy, he set forth a scheme for the founding of the _Bermudas College_, to train missionaries for the colonies and to labor among the North American Indians. As a metaphysician, he was an _absolute idealist_. This is no place to discuss his theory. In the words of Dr. Reid, "He maintains ... that there is no such thing as matter in the universe; that the sun and moon, earth and sea, our own bodies and those of our friends, are nothing but ideas in the minds of those who think of them, and that they have no existence when they are not objects of thought; that all that is in the universe may be reduced to two categories, to wit, _minds_ and _ideas in the mind_." The reader is referred, for a full discussion of this question, to Sir William Hamilton's _Metaphysics_. Berkeley's chief writings are: _New Theory of Vision, Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge_, and _Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous_. His name and memory are especially dear to the American people; for, although his scheme of the training-college failed, he lived for two years and a half in Newport, where his house still stands, and where one of his children is buried. He presented to Yale College his library and his estate in Rhode Island, and he wrote that beautiful poem with its kindly prophecy: Westward the course of empire takes its way: The four first acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day; Time's noblest offspring is the last. CHAPTER XXVII. THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF MODERN FICTION. The New Age. Daniel Defoe. Robinson Crusoe. Richardson. Pamela, and Other Novels. Fielding. Joseph Andrews. Tom Jones. Its Moral. Smollett. Roderick Random. Peregrine Pickle. THE NEW AGE.