comparatively simple, by taking 1801 as the startingpoint and 1900 as the close, to sort into congruous groups all books published within that period. Again, a less crude device would be to select two dates of obvious public importance at a distance of about a hundred years. The French Revolution and the death of Queen Victoria would serve. Or, thirdly, and more subtly still, the century of literature might be defined in literary terms, with Wordsworth's birth as the terminus a quo and Tennyson's death as the terminus ad quem. This view, plausible in itself, ranges sentiment on its side. It is pleasant and graceful to write of the dawn of a literary cycle in the Cumberland hills and of its fading on the moonlight at Haslemere. But none of these methods is historical, the last, perhaps, least of all. Sentiment prepares fresh effects, and February 12th, 1908, with its sunshine on eighty winters at Boxhill, is as notable a date in nineteenth-century literature as October 5th, 1892.

It is not for the sake of fixing dates, but in order to focus observation, that a survey in advance is required. We are seeking a common formula, a distinct and recognizable mark, to which the literary products of the nineteenth century may be referred. For this purpose the period corresponds to no definite tale of years, whether in the Gregorian calendar or in the calendar of great men. The art of an age begins in a tentative way, with little tributary runlets, springing in all kinds of places and percolating all kinds of soil. Presently, these gather strength; they break down the

intervening barriers, and unite in a common stream. A single tendency is observed. Works conforming to that tendency belong to the main current of thought; works failing to conform to it are related thereto in various degrees of reaction, modification, and excess. There is individual variation, and there is a process. of growth. A nation's literature is an organism, subject, like all the rest, to laws of heredity and evolution. Each age is a phase of development. Natural instincts compel it to throw off as violently as it can the slough of the preceding age. The youthful revolt of Keats against 'the name of one Boileau', to which we shall recur later on, is a manifestation of this instinct; it is a birth-mark which disappears. The progress of literature is not measured by weighing this name against that, by opposing the standard of Milton to the standard of Pope, and pronouncing definitely for either. By this method criticism is degraded to 'I like, thou likest, he likes'. The true measure of value for the literature of the eighteenth century is not the revolt of Keats, but the degeneracy of Donne. Out of the 'fantastic' decline the Augustan proprieties were constructed, in obedience to obscure laws of growth, adding purpose and order to the material and power which were to pass to the nineteenth century. But the heirs by natural selection are not mere rebels against their fathers. The butterfly frees itself from the chrysalis; it does not spend its short career in the throes of that antagonism. Agony succeeds antagony, as the noonday the twilight.

When we pass from the birth of a new age to consider its maturity, its agonia,-what it did, and how it did it, the sum of its desire, its achievement, and its bequest, we see more clearly the operation of these obscure laws of growth. Summit by summit, the peaks of literature emerge, each with distinctive features and a character of its own. The cloud-capped peak of the Renaissance, the purple Puritan height, the glittering summit of Augustanism, are revealed in the splendid symmetry of their increasing strength, till the expectant spectator turns to the historian of the new age and demands the record of its trust, the revelation of its accumulated power. It is not enough to drag our footsteps through the flat lands between steep and steep, to observe Keats impatient at Boileau, and De Quincey railing at Pope; a positive formula is wanted, and a definite conclusion from experience: in the process of the ages, fresh light has collided with the darkness-what new colour is revealed?

Reviewed under this aspect not of time but of eternity, a nation's literature is seen to be a part of the coherent movement of mankind towards self-realization and self-expression. The permanence of the arts-as modes independent of their own forms-is a strong argument for optimism, and goes far towards proving man's intuitive belief in ultimate design. The most readily conceivable idea of Good is a state of complete and harmonious satisfaction of every need of expression, and the efforts of mankind tend steadily in that direction. The hand and the eye find their aim before the search

ings of the heart. The wings of the spirit beat in vain, though our air-ships grapple in the void. But as the secrets of matter are revealed, and material darkness rolls away before the increasing sun of knowledge, some glimpses are revealed. Spiritual wisdom, we hope-and Hope survives her broken strings-, is served by the increment to knowledge. Meanwhile, the most readily conceivable idea of Evil is a state of opposition to that tendency, and the value of the opposition lies in the friction between the two, stimulating the tendency to Good. These ideas of finite intelligence are, doubtless, not absolutely right. They are of use as a working hypothesis, however, to explain what were otherwise obscure,-the relation of the spirit to the flesh, and the place of religion and the arts in a material universe. As a child expresses his needs at first in sounds of broken speech, and, later, through a medium of interpretation common to a certain district. -the English language throughout the British Empire, the Italian in Italy, and so forth-, thus employing the best available means, halting and imperfect though it be, of self-expression and communication, so mankind, communing with nature and with whatsoever Power ordained nature's design, devises modes of interpretation, still halting and imperfect, but common to a wider area than a single country or empire. Under each system of religion its adherents are united by a bond of expression, not of ordinary needs which everyday language satisfies, but of spiritual cravings satisfied by a higher revelation. And the religious idea, tran

scending systems of religion, unites mankind by a bond the strength of which is disguised by differences of fashion in the wearing of it. Art, again, is a language interpreting nature to man, and the differences of cult count for less than the imperious need to which the perpetuation of the mode bears witness. As a child laughs or cries when he is pleased or hurt, so man expresses in art-forms his sense of wonder and of beauty which ordinary speech is inadequate to convey.

One further reflection may be suggested. The service of art to man is in the most practical kind. There are those who ignore this fact of supreme importance to appreciation, and, misled by their steep immersion in merely material pursuits, deem religion a pastime for women, and literature, like Latin verse, a kind of 'extra' for schools-a 'frill' of education, in the expressive American phrase. The two things commonly go together, for the so-called emotional appeal of the religious and imaginative moods disguises, and even destroys, their severely practical purpose. This 'man of the world' type of opinion is a man's of a very little world, and his argument deserves to be exposed in all its hideous small-mindedness. Women, because of their part in the little world of these worldlings, are degraded forthwith to a lower intellectual plane, and then religion, almost the sole mystery which still defies knowledge, is committed to their charge. Ignorance has rarely been betrayed by so complete a double fallacy. And hardly, if at all, less servile is the attitude of those who affect to despise