think Aristotle a Greek snob when he maintains that tragedy must find its theme in the sorrows of the god-descended kings. Are not the griefs of the poor or of the middle classes as poignant? They are; but they do not involve such heights and depths of fortune, raising or wrecking whole states, as do the woes “of Thebes, or Atreus’s line.” The fall of Prince Charles from an hour even of shadowy royalty, from the leadership of an army, from the wondering admiration of Europe and the applause of Voltaire into the subject and dependent sot is an example of modern historical tragedy; in its elevation and its decline more apt to move “pity and terror” than the circumstance that a journalist has taken to drink. As in the case of America, so in that of England, I cannot enter into the merits of living novelists in so wide a task as the brief review of a century. Mr. Meredith, as a veteran of the 60’s, has shown, perhaps, fully what is the nature of his achievement; he shines as a creator of character (the highest praise) and as a writer with a thoroughly original view of the world, as a poet and as a wit. That his manner is entirely fortunate, and not rather tinged with wilful eccentricities like those of Browning and Carlyle, can scarcely be disputed. An accomplished young novelist has admitted to me that his manner is “catching,” and that he has to struggle against half-conscious efforts at imitation. Others do not struggle; and most grow older before they are able to write like themselves, with their own voices. Even Mr. Stevenson was caught now and then, his own voice being original indeed, but yet full of memories of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and even of the Cameronian writers. To my mind Mr. Stevenson was the greatest, or, at least, the most enjoyable, of our novelists since George Eliot, excelling in matter and form, though probably always prevented by thwarting circumstances from doing himself complete justice. He practically revived in England the novel historical, now so abundantly practised, and practised with spirit, by Mr. Stanley Weyman, Mr. Anthony Hope, Dr. Conan Doyle, Mr. A. E. W. Mason, and a regiment of followers. The novel scientific, as in the hands of Mr. Wells, and the novel of adventure, “beyond the bounds of known romanticism,” as in Mr. Rider Haggard’s works, with the detective novel and the Oriental and imperialistic romances of Mr. Kipling, prove that man will not be satisfied with domestic realism alone. I never thought he would! Mr. Kipling’s astonishing powers of vision, his habit of ruthlessly cutting the superfluous, and his amazing command of technicalities, help to account for his world-wide fame. But the greatest of these is vision, not an acquired result of thought, but a gift of Heaven. The age has also produced a wealth of novels with a purpose. Would that the authors could be induced to state their purposes squarely, in undecorative treatises! But I confess that the treatises would not be read.