in no despicable strain. Augusta Webster (1840-94) and Emily
Pfeiffer ( -1890) were later poetesses of the same kind, but lower rank,
though both were greatly praised by certain critics. Sarah Williams, a
short-lived writer of some sweetness (1841-68), commended herself
chiefly to those who enjoy verse religious but "broad"; Constance Naden
to those who like pessimist agnosticism; Amy Levy to those who can
deplore a sad fate and admire notes few and not soaring, but passionate
and genuine.

CHAPTER VII

THE NOVEL SINCE 1850

Certain novelists who were mentioned at the end of chapter iii., though
they all lived far into the last half of the century, not only belonged
essentially to its first division, but strictly speaking fell out of
strict chronological arrangement of any kind, being of the class of more
or less eccentric men of genius who may appear at any time and belong to
none in particular; and certain others of the earlier time, less
eccentric, lived on far towards our own. About 1850 however, a little
before or a little after it, there appeared a group of novelists of
great talent, and in some cases of genius itself, who were less
self-centred, and exemplified to a greater degree the special tendencies
of the time. These tendencies were variously connected with the Oxford
or Tractarian Movement; the transfer of political power from the upper
to the middle classes by the first Reform Bill; the rise of what is for
shortness called Science; the greater esteem accorded to and the more
general practice of what is, again for shortness, called Art; the
extension in a certain sense of education; the re-engagement of England,
long severed from continental politics, in those politics by the Crimean
war; the enormous development of commerce by the use of steam navigation
and of railways; the opening up of Australia and its neighbourhood; the
change effected in the East by the removal, gradual for some time, then
rapid and complete after the Indian Mutiny, of the power of the East
India Company; and the "Liberal" movement generally.

To work and counterwork out the influence of these various causes on
separate authors, and the connection of the authors with the causes,
would take a volume in itself. But on the scale and within the limits
possible here, the names of Charlotte Bronte, Marian Evans (commonly
called George Eliot), Charles Kingsley, Anthony Trollope, and Charles
Reade will give us such central poin