es us to admit that we must all play
the chess game of life against an opponent that never makes an error
and never fails to count our mistakes against us.

[Illustration: THOMAS HUXLEY. _From the painting by Collier,
National Portrait Gallery_.]

"The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the
universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature.
The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his
play is always fair, just, and patient. But we also know, to our
cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest
allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest
stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which
the strong man shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is
checkmated--without haste, but without remorse.
* * * * *
"Well, what I mean by Education is learning the rules of this mighty
game. In other words, education is the instruction of the intellect
in the laws of Nature, under which name I include not merely things
and their forces, but men and their ways; and the fashioning of the
affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move
in harmony with those laws."[1]

We find the influence of science manifest in much of the general
literature of the age, as well as in the special writings of the
scientists. Science introduced to literature a new interest in
humanity and impressed on writers what is known as the "growth idea."
Preceding literature, with the conspicuous exception of Shakespeare's
work, had for the most part presented individuals whose character was
already fixed. This age loved to show the growth of souls. George
Eliot's novels are frequently Darwinian demonstrations of the various
steps in the moral growth or the perversion of the individual. In
_Rabbi Ben Ezra_, Browning thus expresses this new idea of the working
of the Divine Power:--

"He fixed thee mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance."

The Trend of Prose; Minor Prose Writers.--The prose of this age is
remarkable for amount and variety. In addition to the work of the
scientists, there are the essays and histories of Macaulay and
Carlyle, the essays and varied prose of Newman, the art and social
philosophy of Ruskin, the critical essays of Matthew Arnold and
Swinburne.

One essayist, Walter Pater (1839-1894), an Oxford graduate and
teacher, who kept h