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They had a natural love of the when he invented harmonies of prose new to our English speech? There is not one of his books which is not packed with living persons, speaking each of them in the authentic language of his or of her own. Of all the writers who have been born in England, he most nearly resembles Shakespeare in his universality and his good humour. The resources of our tongue cannot be carried further than they are carried, for instance, in 'Great Expectations,' from whose opening chapters the whole art of fiction might be reinvented, were all lost but that.

pulpit, and they showed a they showed a steady determination to bring round their readers to their own way of thinking. The historians one and all wrote to a thesis. Huxley and Tyndall would have been divines had they not strayed into science. The great Matthew Arnold himself was "delivering addresses" of improvement even when theology was not his topic. The novelists one and all were noisily grinding their axes in the very act to amuse their readers. And yet let us not be too sure that the habit of the pulpit was exclusively the vice of the Victorian age. It would not be difficult to show that it has been the vice of the English throughout the ages. When Lamb retorted upon Coleridge, who asked him if he would like to hear him preach, that he had never heard him do anything else, he made a joke of general application. We can look into the past and find a hundred artists who were preachers in their hours, and perhaps it were fair to say that the Victorian did but intensify a national habit.

But if they were preachers, they were, many of them, artists also. The age which called Dickens its master need not fear any reproach. Dickens preached incessantly to be sure; but what does it matter, when he created a world of wit and humour all his own,

All those doubters, therefore, who pretend to see in the Victorian age little else than a hypocritical and interested Philistinism, we advise to read Professor Elton's volumes. On many a page they will find opinions which they would like to controvert. They will find also a highly laudable faculty of appreciation, strained rather too far (we think) for Carlyle and Ruskin and some others. But the mere unfolding of the panorama is enough for conviction. Truly the age which produced these masters of verse and prose need not fear the competition of the past, and may even make a light burden of the dissidence of dissent and the hot gospel of free trade, which it is doomed to carry upon its back through all time.

Printed by William Blackwood and Sons.

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Entered as second-class matter, July 3, 1917. at the post office at New York, N. Y.. under

the act of March 3, 1879

$5.00 Per Year.

Single Copy, 50 Cents

of prose new to our English speech? There is not one of his books which is not packed with living persons, speaking each of them in the authentic language of his or of her own. Of all the writers who have been born in England, he most nearly resembles Shakespeare in his universality and his good humour. The resources of our tongue cannot be carried further than they are carried, for instance, in 'Great Expectations,' from whose opening chapters the whole art of fiction might be reinvented, were all lost but that.

They had a natural love of the when he invented harmonies pulpit, and they showed a steady determination to bring round their readers to their own way of thinking. The historians one and all wrote to a thesis. Huxley and Tyndall would have been divines had they not strayed into science. The great Matthew Arnold himself was "delivering addresses" of improvement even when theology was not his topic. The novelists one and all were noisily grinding their axes in the very act to amuse their readers. And yet let us not be too sure that the habit of the pulpit was exclusively the vice of the Victorian age. It would not be difficult to show that it has been the vice of the English throughout the ages. When Lamb retorted upon Coleridge, who asked him if he would like to hear him preach, that he had never heard him do anything else, he made a joke of general application. We can look into the past and find a hundred artists who were preachers in their hours, and perhaps it were fair to say that the Victorian did but intensify a national habit.

But if they were preachers, they were, many of them, artists also. The age which called Dickens its master need not fear any reproach. Dickens preached incessantly to be sure; but what does it matter, when he created a world of wit and humour all his own,

All those doubters, therefore, who pretend to see in the Victorian age little else than a hypocritical and interested Philistinism, we advise to read Professor Elton's volumes. On many a page they will find opinions which they would like to controvert. They will find also a highly laudable faculty of appreciation, strained rather too far (we think) for Carlyle and Ruskin and some others. But the mere unfolding of the panorama is enough for conviction. Truly the age which produced these masters of verse and prose need not fear the competition of the past, and may even make a light burden of the dissidence of dissent and the hot gospel of free trade, which it is doomed to carry upon its back through all time.

Printed by William Blackwood and Sons.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Entered as second-class matter, July 3, 1917. at the post office at New York, N. Y.. under

the act of March 3, 1879

$5.00 Per Year.

Single Copy, 50 Cents

Yurovsky; and the Murder of the Tzar

by

CAPTAIN FRANCIS MCCULLAGH

A remarkable account of one of the darkest episodes in modern history by one who has personally visited the scene of the murder and conversed with his assassins. The most tragic story of the Great War told for the first time. Capt. McCullagh had the advantage of very unusual opportunities for the collection of the information contained in this account, which forms one of the most important articles in any recent periodical. In the September number of

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AND AFTER

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