All the modern masters of English fiction are in their different ways as much the products of that series of movements comprehended in, or grouped round, the French Revolution of the eighteenth century as Byron himself was in England the immediate progeny of that organic upheaval of thought and faith. The year of the accession produced Carlyle's _History of the French Revolution_. Four years later, the most powerful picture of these episodes presented by any writer of fiction was given to the world by Bulwer in _Zanoni_. To the same era of revolutionary influences belonged _A Tale of Two Cities_, in which Dickens not only illustrated after his own manner the age of Robespierre, but produced a work not inferior in literary art to the _Esmond_ of his great rival. Lytton's genius impelled him to mysticism, as George Eliot's associations inclined her to positivism. Both after their own manner dealt with human problems from what they respectively thought the scientific point of view. Add to this that Lytton remained a student annexing new domains of interest, thought and knowledge to the last; that he showed himself the prophet of the new and better France in _The Parisians_, as he had been the bard of the new England beyond the seas before the curtain fell on the fortunes and the friends of Pisistratus Caxton. Enough is said to vindicate his place as among the most representative writers of the age, as well as to explain the recent renascence of his writings in France and the growing popularity of his works as attested by the fresh editions issuing from the house of Routledge in England. Macaulay, though never a newspaper man, is in point of manner, the father of the leading article. The terse impressionist style which has much superseded the Macaulayan in the press may be referred to George Borrow, author of _The Bible in Spain_, than whom no one has influenced periodical writers more beneficially; to Kinglake in his _Eothen_; to his literary disciple, Lawrence Oliphant in _Piccadilly_; to the late Grenville Murray, whose 'Roving Englishman' in _All the Year Round_ contains the happiest of travel sketches, and whose Young Brown in the _Cornhill Magazine_ is a miracle of clever writing. Each of these has contributed to make such happy writers of concise prose as Jehu, Junior, in _Vanity Fair_, and Violet Fane, now Lady Currie, in her clever and original novel, _Sophy_. Carlyle, Ruskin, Tennyson, Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold complete a representative list of educators of popular taste during our age. They are, however, heroic instances. Others, with not a tenth of their fame have reached at least as far in their influence, and have brought their refining mission home to the masses with an intimacy not approached by their mightier rivals.