Another story which is usually bracketed with this is _Diana of the Crossways_. This great novel was founded on a real incident in English history of Meredith's time. Diana Warwick was drawn from Caroline Norton, one of the three beautiful and brilliant granddaughters of Sheridan, author of _The School for Scandal_. Her marriage was disastrous, and her husband accused her of infidelity with Lord Melbourne, Prime Minister at the time. His divorce suit caused a great scandal, but it resulted in her vindication. Then later she was accused of betraying to a writer on the TIMES the secret that Sir Robert Peel had decided to repeal the corn laws. This secret had been confided to her by Sidney Herbert, one of her admirers. Meredith's novel, in which the results of Diana's treachery were brought out, resulted in a public inquiry into the charge against Caroline Norton, which found that she was innocent. But the fact that Meredith used such an incident as the climax of his story gave _Diana of the Crossways_ an enormous vogue, and did much to bring the novelist into public favor. [Illustration: FLINT COTTAGE, BOXHILL, THE HOME OF GEORGE MEREDITH--HIS WRITING WAS DONE IN A SMALL SWISS CHALET IN THE GARDEN] No more brilliant woman than Diana has ever been drawn by Meredith, but despite the art of her creator it is impossible for the reader to imagine her selling for money a great party secret which had been whispered to her by the man she loved. She was too keen a woman to plead, as Diana pleaded, that she did not recognize the importance of this secret, for the defense is cut away by her admission that she was promised thousands of pounds by the newspaperman at the very time that her extravagances had loaded her with debts. Space is lacking here to do more than mention three or four of Meredith's other novels that are fine works of art. These are _Rhoda Fleming_, _Sandra Belloni_, _Evan Harrington_ and _The Egoist_. Each is a masterpiece in its way; each is full of human passion, yet tinged with a philosophy that lifts up the novels to what Meredith himself called "honorable fiction, a fount of life, an aid to life, quick with our blood." The novel to him was a means of showing man's spiritual nature, "a soul born active, wind-beaten, but ascending." A score of novels Meredith wrote in his long life. The work of his later years was not happy. _The Amazing Marriage_ and _Lord Ormont and His Aminta_ are mere shadows of his earlier work, with all his old mannerisms intensified. But if you like Richard and Diana, then you can enlarge your acquaintance with Meredith to your own exceeding profit, for he is one of the great masters of fiction, who used the novel merely to preach his doctrine of the richness and fulness of human life if we would but see it with his eyes. STEVENSON PRINCE OF MODERN STORY-TELLERS HIS STORIES OF ADVENTURE AND HIS BRILLIANT ESSAYS--"TREASURE ISLAND" AND "DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE" HIS MOST POPULAR BOOKS.