emporary world as is
Mr. Bernard Shaw or Mr. Wells. But it is in men of the latter type
that we shall find the qualities by which their epoch is
differentiated from others, the qualities which to some extent appear
in the greatest, which appear far more abundantly in those biggest
only in contemporary estimation--which in any case mark the trend of
thought and the peculiar contribution of the time. The literature
produced by men of this type is most profoundly impressed by what may
be called the spirit of change.

The briefest consideration of contemporary literature is sufficient to
prove how powerfully these minds have been moulded, either by
observing this fact of change or contemplating its possibility. The
fact itself may perhaps best be illustrated by the case of Mr. Edmund
Gosse and the story told in his memorable book, _Father and Son_. As a
piece of biography alone that book stands high, for the fine drawing
of the mind and character of the father. But the noticeable point lies
in the vivid contrast between the father and son, the transition from
the hard-headed, scrupulous, rigid, narrow-minded Puritan, who is so
typical of the Victorian age, to the broad-minded, cultured
_litterateur_ of to-day. There is the fact of change--the Rev. Philip
Gosse of forty years ago has become the Mr. Edmund Gosse of to-day.

If we would see how this actual change in the outward and inward order
of the world has affected novelists we may turn to Mr. Arnold Bennett,
Mr. Wells, or Mr. E.M. Forster. In _Clayhanger_, as in _Old Wives'
Tales_, Mr. Bennett traces the progression of the English world from
the generation of our grandfathers to our own generation; he shows
this change creeping upon us at an accelerated pace, catching the
older inhabitants unawares, a visible change in bricks and mortar, in
widening streets, in enlarged factories, in the introduction of trams
which in due course became electric trams; and a change no less
decisive in customs and habits, the older folk marvelling at the
new-fangled independence of the young; the whole being nothing less
than a revolution which has descended with the sure but imperceptible
advance of a glacier, so that within living memory the face and
character of England have been altered. In _Milestones_ he has more
recently given us another account of the same historic progression.

And an exactly similar idea has captured the imagination of Mr. Wells.
In _The New Machiavelli_, as i