_Apollo, Pan, and Love,_ _And even Olympian Jove_ _Grow faint, for killing Truth hath glared on them;_ _Our hills, and seas, and streams,_ _Dispeopled of their dreams,_ become the mere primary material for an endless series of naturalistic stories. And even to-day, when the young David of symbolism rises to smite the Goliath Zola, the smooth stones he takes out of his scrip are works of fiction by Maurice Barrès and Edouard Rod. The schools pass and nicknames alter; but the novel rules in France as it does elsewhere. We have but to look around us at this very moment to see how complete the tyranny of the novel is. If one hundred educated and grown men--not, of course, themselves the authors of other books--were to be asked which are the three most notable works published in London during the season of 1892, would not ninety-and-nine be constrained to answer, with a parrot uniformity, _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_, _David Grieve_, _The Little Minister_? These are the books which have been most widely discussed, most largely bought, most vehemently praised, most venomously attacked. These are the books in which the "trade" has taken most interest, the vitality of which is most obvious and indubitable. It may be said that the conditions of the winter of 1892 were exceptional--that no books of the first class in other branches were produced. This may be true; and yet Mr. Jebb issued a volume of his Sophocles, Mr. William Morris a collection of the lyric poems of years, Mr. Froude his _Divorce of Catherine of Aragon_, and Mr. Tyndall his _New Fragments_. If the poets in chorus had blown their silver trumpets and the philosophers their bold bassoons, the result would have been the same: they would have won some respect and a little notice for their performances; but the novelists would have carried away the money and the real human curiosity. Who shall say that Mr. Freeman was not a better historian than Robertson was? yet did he make £4,500 by his _History of Sicily_? I wish I could believe it. To-day Mr. Swinburne may publish a new epic, Mr. Gardiner discover to us the head of Charles I. on the scaffold, Mr. Herbert Spencer explore a fresh province of sociology, or Mr. Pater analyse devils in the accents of an angel--none of these important occurrences will successfully compete, for more than a few moments, among educated people, with the publication of what is called, in publishers' advertisements, "the new popular and original novel of the hour." We are accustomed to this state of things, and we bow to it. But we may, perhaps, remind ourselves that it is a comparatively recent condition. It was not so in 1730, nor in 1800, nor even in 1835.