1080 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J. 
their long residence on the Continent, were much influenced 
by the literature of the Latin nations; and Byron is probably 
better appreciated in France and Italy than in England. All 
these writers were under the spell of the French Revolution, and 
the fire and fervour which glow in their stories of battle and 
passion were but reflections from the volcanic outburst across the 
Channel. 
The main feature of the Victorian era is the absence of any one 
predominating style either in prose or poetry ; on the contrary, 
many styles may be selected, each strongly marked in its charac- 
teristics, and excellent of its kind, yet differing from all others in 
a striking degree. Few of the Victorian writers speak for the 
nation as a whole. ‘Tennyson is the poet of the well-educated 
classes, and Thackeray is their novel writer; Dickens is the 
exponent of city life, speaking for the millions of London ; Char- 
lotte Bronté gives her impressions of Northumbrian life, true from 
the Peak to the Tweed ; Carlyle stands solitary and aloof, an old 
Norse rock not yet buried under the softer strata of Celt and 
Saxon ; Charles Kingsley represents south-western England, the 
birth-place of Elizabethan seamen, the home of the gentlemen 
adventurers, and the cradle of the Glorious Revolution of 1689. 
Trollope, like Thackeray, restricts himself mainly to people who 
sit above the salt ; George Eliot had an artistic soul and a critical 
mastery over the English language, but her productions, especially 
the latter ones, are forced and laboured, and have nothing repre- 
senting the smooth unconscious flow of the selected one who speaks 
with the voice of national inspiration. 
Carlyle, by choosing to convey his thoughts to the world in what 
can only be regarded as a dialect, cut himself off from all but a 
chosen and cultured section of his fellow-countrymen. Among 
Victorian writers Macaulay most sharply contrasts with Carlyle. 
He is the man of the world—the great optimist, the champion of 
things as they are. His lays, essays, and history are known 
throughout the English-speaking world; and, though the critics 
have denounced them, and find them full of literary faults, they 
have never been able to shake the national love for his works, or 
the delight of the millions in their perusal. It has been said by 
Mr. Chamberlain that, though his countrymen may be mistaken 
in matters of political detail, they are invariably correct in their 
judgment of the main issues; and I believe this is as true of 
literature as it is of politics. 
Disraeli has shown us what a powerful weapon may be made of 
the novel in politics. With his three novels, Coningsby, Sybil, 
and Tancred, he crushed the Whig party, rehabilitated the Tories 
on their present basis, and rallied the forces of the English Church 
and of British Imperialism, to the assistance of modern Conserva- 
tism. Disraeli’s works are the only instances in English literature 
