nd other things. Wilkie Collins was the
chief of these, but there were many others. In particular the periodical
developed a sort of popular, jocular, and picturesque-descriptive manner
of treating places, travels, ceremonies, and what not, which took the
public fancy immensely. It was not quite original (for Leigh Hunt,
Wainewright the murderer-miscellanist of the _London_, some of the
_Blackwood_ men, and others, had anticipated it to a certain extent),
and it was vulgarised as regards all its models; but it was distinct
and remarkable. The aesthetic and literary tone of _Household Words_, and
of its successor _All the Year Round_ to a somewhat less extent, was
distinctly what is called Philistine; and though Dickens always had a
moral purpose, he did not aim much higher than amusement that should not
be morbid, and instruction of the middle-class diffusion-of-knowledge
kind. But there was very little harm and much good to be said of
_Household Words_; and if some of the imitations of it were far from
being happy, its own popularity and that of its successor were very
fairly deserved.

The aims, the character, and the success of the _Saturday Review_ were
of the most widely different character. It was less novel in form, for
the weekly review was an established thing, and had at least two very
respectable examples--the _Examiner_, which (under the Hunts, under
Fonblanque, under Forster, and under the late Mr. Minto) had a
brilliant, if never an extremely prosperous, career for three-quarters
of the century, and the _Spectator_, which attained a reputation for
unswerving honesty under the editorship of Mr. Rentoul, and has
increased it under that of its present conductors. But both these were
Liberal papers first of all; the _Saturday Review_, at first and
accidentally Peelite, was really (throughout the nearly forty years
during which it remained in the possession of the same family and was
directed by a succession of editors each of whom had been trained under
his predecessor) Independent Tory, or (to use a rather unhappy and now
half-forgotten name) Liberal-Conservative. It never tied itself to party
chariot-wheels, and from the first to the last of the period just
referred to very distinguished writers of Liberal and Radical opinions
contributed to it. But the general attitude of the paper during this
time expressed that peculiar tone of mainly Conservative persiflage
which has distinguished in literature the great