Huxley was even a more brilliant interpreter of science to popular audiences.  His so-called Lay Sermons (1870) are invigorating presentations of scientific and educational subjects.  He awakened many to a sense of the importance of “knowing the laws of the physical world” and “the relations of cause and effect therein.”  Nowhere is he more impressive than where he forces 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.