No wonder that there is little of the revolutionary ardor of Shelley and Byron in Tennyson, Browning, and other recent poets. They have delighted in progress; but they have seen that it must come through such peaceable changes in public opinion, and then in legislation, as are caused by free discussion. The benign influence of peace has enabled them to display such brilliancy as had not been seen in England for more than two hundred years. No other writers ever paid so much attention to public health and the general happiness. The ablest thought of the century has been devoted to enriching human life, and not to destroying it. This has enabled science to make unprecedented progress. A new period of intellectual history has been opened by Spencer and Darwin. VIII. Prominent among reformers who had no wish for revolution, and no respect for science, were Dickens and Carlyle. The latter's ("former's" Ed.) aversion to political economy as "the dismal science" was echoed in the pages of _Hard Times_; and the absence of any reference in _Dombey and Son_ to the great movement against the corn laws is characteristic of a novelist whose _Pickwick Papers_ made fun of scientific investigation. What was there called the "tittlebat" is really that nest-building fish, the stickleback. Passages ridiculing the use of statistics might be quoted at great length from both authors. Dickens had too much sympathy with paupers, especially those who suffered under the poor-law of 1834; and Carlyle had much too little. They agreed in opposition to model prisons and other new forms of philanthropy. Perhaps it was mainly the habit of indiscriminate ridicule which suggested such caricatures as Mrs. Jellaby and Mrs. Pardiggle. Carlyle's belief that abolitionism was "an alarming Devil's Gospel" and his denunciation of "the sugary, disastrous jargon of philanthropy" were legitimate results of idolatry of what he called "early, earnest times," namely the Dark Ages. His sympathy with mediaeval methods was so narrow that he spoke of a poet of weak health and high culture, whom he saw suffering under a sentence of two years in a pestilential prison, forbidden books or writing materials, kept most of the time alone and on bread and water, but guilty of nothing worse than a Chartist speech, as "master of his own time and spiritual resources to, as I supposed, a really enviable extent." Dickens shows much more appreciation of the real superiority of modern times, though personal disappointments, during his visit to America, prevented him from acknowledging the merits of democracy. Carlyle's reverence for the early Hebrews and other primitive barbarians made him present hero-worship as the only secure corner-stone of politics. His receipt for a perfect government is this: "Find in any country the ablest man that exists there; raise him to the supreme place; and loyally reverence him." "Such a government is not to be