Here, in short, we perceive the influence of that very characteristic school of contemporary art, which we know to have always existed, but to which men have recently given the exceedingly modern title of Impressionist,--the school of authors who desire to strike the imagination vividly and with a few sharp strokes, grouping their figures in a strong light, rounding off their compact story upon a small canvas, and rejecting every detail that is not strictly accessory to the main purpose. Already it is beginning to be said in France that Zola with his laborious particularism has passed his climacteric of fashion, and that the swift impressionist is sailing in on a fair wind of spreading popularity. Now in France, though no longer in England, the critics still do their duty; they are not merely, to borrow a phrase from Coleridge, the eunuchs who guard the temple of the Muses; they are often prolific authors who exercise great influence upon public opinion, so that their forecast of the course and tendencies of fiction is worth bearing in mind. We ourselves are ever a restless, bustling, far-wandering folk, great lovers of fiction and travel, who not only carry forth the English language into the uttermost parts of the earth, to be moulded in strange dialects to queer uses, but also bring back fresh ideas and incidents, and various aspects of a many-sided world-ranging life. If, as has been often asserted, literature be the collective expression of the ideas and aspirations, the tastes, feelings, and habits of the generation which produces it, we may not be altogether wrong in treating the short highly finished story, whether of adventure or manners, as the impress and reflection of modern English society. But no operation is more delicate than the endeavour to trace the subtle connection between constant modifications of literary form and the pressure of its ever-changing moral and material environment. FOOTNOTES: [1] The list of these contributions at page 477 of his _Life_ is not complete. [2] (1) _The English Novel._ By Walter Raleigh. Being a short Sketch of its History from the Earliest Times to the Appearance of 'Waverley.' London, 1894. (2) _Aventures de Guerre au temps de la Republique et du Consulat._ Par A. Moreau de Jonnes. Preface de M. Leon Say. Paris, Guillaumin et Cie., 1893.--_Quarterly Review_, October 1894. [3] Now Sir Walter Raleigh. [4] Page 179. [5] _Sense and Sensibility._ [6] _The Art of Illustration_, by Henry Blackburn, 1894. ENGLISH LETTER-WRITING IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY[7]