George Eliot was the last of the race of giants in fiction. Some good novelists remain to be noticed, but none who can without hesitation be called great. Those who did respectable work are so numerous that the task of selection becomes exceedingly difficult; and moreover, as we draw near the dividing-line, it proves sometimes doubtful whether a man should be included in the present period, or viewed as belonging to that still current. It is safe to say however that of all forms of literature, fiction is the one in which a rigorous law of selection is the most necessary. Many popular writers must be passed over in silence. Mrs. Henry Wood, notwithstanding the success of her _East Lynne_, can be barely mentioned; and little more is possible in the case of Dinah Maria Craik, best known as the author of _John Halifax, Gentleman_, a pleasing but somewhat namby-pamby story, ranked by some unaccountably high. Mrs. Craik never shocks, never startles, nor does she ever invigorate. She is one of those writers who appeal to the taste of the middle class, not perhaps as it is now, but as it was a generation ago. Three detached novels, by men who cannot be classed as writers of fiction, may be named for the sake of their authors--_Eustace Conway_ (1834), by F. D. Maurice, and _Loss and Gain_ (1848) and _Callista_ (1856), by J. H. Newman. Maurice's story was written when, a young man, he was still groping his way; but Newman's deliberately and when the bent of his mind had been long taken. His novels are among the symptoms of the passing of theological interest into general literature, but they have in themselves no value. [Sidenote: Charles Kingsley (1819-1875).]