While the anniversaries of the Queen's accession were few in number, Lytton by the side of Dickens, as a popular master of the pen, filled something like the place which Thackeray had occupied before him. During most of his time, another man of letters belonging like Lytton to the titled classes divided with Lytton the social patronage of literary beginners. No man of his day did so much as Lytton to help younger men with the booksellers, as in his old-fashioned phrase he was apt to call the publishers. He had indeed a rival or a colleague in these good offices in Lord Stanhope, then Lord Mahon, the historian, as also in Mr Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton, the timely friend of Coventry Patmore, and the rescuer from great troubles of a forgotten but deserving poet David Gray. When as yet journalism as a profession was not fully organized, and young authors still looked first to the pillars of Paternoster Row, an introduction to Lord Lytton or to Lord Stanhope was the surest stepping stone to print. In this way Antonio Gallenga, then an obscure refugee, with associations of the dagger and bowl about him, having won the good word of Lytton, found a publisher for his _History of Piedmont_. This in its turn opened to him the office of the _Times_. Here he made his name not only as among the most brilliant, best informed and versatile of newspaper writers but, together with William Howard Russell, as a founder of that school of graphic newspaper narrative since represented by Archibald Forbes, Edward Dicey, B. H. Becker, G. A. Henty, George Augustus Sala, and John O'Shea. The development of the press has changed most of the conditions of literary life. For very many Englishmen of all classes, the periodical, daily, weekly, or monthly, is practically an exclusive synonym for literature itself. This fact of course has reacted upon the whole class of professional writers. The most commercially successful of men and women of letters are, as, since the days of Sir Walter Scott, they have been, authors of some novel which hits the taste of the moment, and fixes the interest of the town. When George Eliot wedded in her writings the artistic to the scientific spirit, she invented a combination unknown till then; she opened a gold mine for herself and the more dexterous of her disciples. Dickens and Thackeray both realized high prices for the labour of their pen. Wilkie Collins and Charles Reade were not far behind. But the men of this class were either original creators of literary types that will take their place with the characters of Shakespeare, and Cervantes, or else were masters in the manufacture of exciting and dramatic plots.