THE SPIRIT OF MODERN LITERATURE.  As we reflect on the varied work of the Victorian writers, three marked characteristics invite our attention.  First, our great literary men, no less than our great scientists, have made truth the supreme object of human endeavor.  All these eager poets, novelists, and essayists, questing over so many different ways, are equally intent on discovering the truth of life.  Men as far apart as Darwin and Newman are strangely alike in spirit, one seeking truth in the natural, the other in the spiritual history of the race.  Second, literature has become the mirror of truth; and the first requirement of every serious novel or essay is to be true to the life or the facts which it represents.  Third, literature has become animated by a definite moral purpose.  It is not enough for the Victorian writers to create or attempt an artistic work for its own sake; the work must have a definite lesson for humanity.  The poets are not only singers, but leaders; they hold up an ideal, and they compel men to recognize and follow it.  The novelists tell a story which pictures human life, and at the same time call us to the work Of social reform, or drive home a moral lesson.  The essayists are nearly all prophets or teachers, and use literature as the chief instrument of progress and education.  Among them all we find comparatively little of the exuberant fancy, the romantic ardor, and the boyish gladness of the Elizabethans.  They write books not primarily to delight the artistic sense, but to give bread to the hungry and water to the thirsty in soul.  Milton’s famous sentence, “A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit,” might be written across the whole Victorian era.  We are still too near these writers to judge how far their work suffers artistically from their practical purpose; but this much is certain,—­that whether or not they created immortal works, their books have made the present world a better and a happier place to live in.  And that is perhaps the best that can be said of the work of any artist or artisan.

SUMMARY OF THE VICTORIAN AGE.  The year 1830 is generally placed at the beginning of this period, but its limits are very indefinite.  In general we may think of it as covering the reign of Victoria (1837-1901).  Historically the age is remarkable for the growth of democracy following the Reform Bill of 1832; for the spread of education among all classes; for the rapid development of the arts and sciences; for important mechanical inventions; and for the enormous extension of the bounds of human knowledge by the discoveries of science.