This was written at a time, remember, when the invention of machinery, the rapid growth of industrialism, and the increasing mobility of the population of the world, had broken down the old order of things, had created large fortunes and reduced thousands to destitution; when men poured into cities and lived crowded and unhealthy in slums, when the opening phase of the grim battle between employer and employed was fought, when trade-unionism was wrested from an unwilling Government, when housing regulations, health regulations, and poor-laws, were incapable of dealing with the wars of misery, poverty, and sickness, they were designed to meet, when little by little vested interests and class prejudices were brought before the judgment of reason and found wanting--it was in such a period of our national history that Harry Kingsley could write of "settled order, in which each one knows his place and his duties." This attitude of mind is characteristic of a whole school of mid-Victorian novelists, and George Meredith--whose earliest novel, "Richard Feverel," was published about this date--broke many a lance against it, and scolded us and laughed at us, and upset our dignified conception of ourselves, and sometimes, in his irritable affection for his countrymen, took a bludgeon to us, and broke our heads. I find it also in another and much greater novel, to attack which in a book dealing with this corner of Devon and Somerset is indeed a sort of _lese-majeste_--for, to most people, who says "Exmoor" says "Lorna Doone."