It was in the year 1894--a year made memorable by the appearance of _Trilby_, the _Prisoner of Zenda_, _The Jungle Book_, _Lord Ormont and his Aminta_, _Esther Waters_, and other notable novels--that Mrs. Ward greatly increased her reputation and widened her circle of readers by the publication of _Marcella_. Here she gave us a political-didactic-realistic novel, which she has continued to publish steadily ever since under different titles. It was gravely announced that this new book would deal with socialism and the labour question. Many readers, who felt that she had said the last word on agnosticism in _Elsmere_, now looked forward with reverent anticipation not only to the final solution of socialistic problems, but to some coherent arrangement of their own vague and confused ideas. Naturally, they got just what they deserved--a voluminous statement of various aspects of the problem, with no solution at all. It is curious how many persons suppose that their favourite author or orator has done something toward settling questions, when, as a matter of fact, all he has done is to _state_ them, and then state them again. This is especially true of philosophical and metaphysical difficulties. Think how eagerly readers took up Professor James's exceedingly clever book on Pragmatism, hoping at last to find rest in some definite principle. And if there ever was a blind alley in philosophy, it is Pragmatism--the very essence of agnosticism. Now, _Marcella_, as a document, is both radical and reactionary. There is an immense amount of radical talk; but the heroine's schemes fail, the Labour party is torn by dissension, Wharton proves to be a scoundrel, and the rebel Marcella marries a respectable nobleman. There is not a single page in the book, with all its wilderness of words, that can be said to be in any sense a serious contribution to the greatest of all purely political problems. And, as a work of art, it is painfully limited; but since it has the same virtues and defects of all her subsequent literary output, we may consider what these virtues and defects are.