in the experience of a human soul that looks out through dull gray eyes, and that speaks in a voice of quite ordinary tones." The creations of George Eliot,--Tito and Baldassare, Mrs Poyser and Silas Marner, Dorothy Brooke and Gwendolen,--are not as familiar to the reading public of to-day as they were to that of ten or fifteen years ago. Of the idolatry which almost made her a prophetess of a new cult we hear nothing now. She has not maintained her position as Dickens, Thackeray, and Charlotte Brontë have maintained theirs. But if there be little of partisanship and much detraction, it is idle to deny that George Eliot's many gifts, her humour, her pathos, her remarkable intellectual endowments, give her an assured place among the writers of Victorian literature. The next in order of prominence among the novelists of the period is =Charles Kingsley (1819-1875)=. He was born at Holne Vicarage, on the borders of Dartmoor, and was educated at King's College, London, and Magdalen College, Cambridge. After this he received the curacy of Eversley, in Hampshire, of which parish he finally became rector. In 1848 he published a drama entitled "The Saint's Tragedy," with St Elizabeth of Hungary as heroine. A year later his novel of "Alton Locke" gained him the title of "The Chartist Parson." This tale, in which Carlyle is introduced in the person of an old Scotch bookseller, was a crude and yet vigorous expression of sympathy with the Chartist movement, and its influence was tremendous. For its sympathy with the working classes, and in its reflection of the broad and tolerant Christianity of which Kingsley was always the eloquent preacher, "Alton Locke," in common with "Yeast" and "Two Years Ago," is a valuable contribution to literature. Kingsley, however, became a truer artist when, as in "Hypatia" and "Westward Ho!" he had not social and religious ends in view. "Hypatia," in spite of many historical errors, is a brilliant sketch of the early Church at Alexandria. Gibbon, from whom Kingsley obtained the hint for this book, would have revelled in the apparent endorsement by a latter-day clergyman of his estimate of the early Christianity of the East. "Westward Ho!" is a picturesque narrative of English rivalry with Spain in the reign of Elizabeth. The contrasts of character in Frank and Amyas Leigh perhaps give this novel a claim to be considered Kingsley's best effort. He wrote many other works, including children's stories, scientific lectures, and poems, among which last the beautiful ballads, "The Three Fishers" and "The Sands of Dee," are the most popular. For nine years he held the office of Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, but his unphilosophical views of history made his presence there a misfortune. A model country clergyman, a man essentially healthy-minded and interested in all phases of life and thought, Kingsley's influence, especially on young men, during the past five-and-thirty years, has been very great