[Illustration:  J. M. Barrie.]

[Illustration:  Richard Jefferies.]

This is an age of great explorers.  Stanley has succeeded to Livingstone, Nansen to Franklin; but it has been only within comparatively recent years that women have emulated men in penetrating to remote regions.  Within the decade we have seen Mrs. Bishop a veteran traveller, visiting south-west Persia; Mrs. French Sheldon has shown how far beyond the beaten track a woman’s adventurous spirit may lead her; and Miss Mary Kingsley, a niece of the late Charles Kingsley, has intrepidly explored the interior of Africa, her scientific observations being welcomed by British savants.  In 1896 women, who had long sought the privilege, were permitted to compete for the diploma of the Royal College of Surgeons, and in many other walks of usefulness the barriers excluding women have been removed, with benefit to all concerned.  It is not other than natural that under the reign of a noble woman there should arise women noble-minded as herself, cherishing ideas of life and duty lofty as her own, and that their greatest elevation of purpose should tent to raise the moral standard among the men who work with them for the uplifting of their fellow subjects.  Such signs of the times may be noticed now, more evident than even ten years ago.

[Illustration:  Professor Huxley. From a Photograph by the London Stereoscopic Co.]

[Illustration:  Professor Tyndall. From a Photograph by Alexander Bassano, Ltd.]

The educational progress of the last decade has been very great, especially as regards the instruction of women; yet the period has not been noticeably fruitful of literature in the highest sense.  In the world of fiction there is much that looks like degeneration; the lighter magazines and serials have multiplied past computation, and form all the reading of not a few persons.  To counteract the unhealthy “modern novel” has arisen the Scottish school, the “literature of the kailyard,” as it has been termed in scorn; yet a purer air breathes in the pages of J. M. Barrie, “Ian Maclaren,” and Crockett.  Their many imitators are in some danger of impairing the vogue of these masters, but still the tendency of the school is wholesome.  Other artists in fiction assume the part of censors of society, and write of its doings with a bitterness that may or may not profit; the unveiling of cancerous sores is of doubtful advantage to health.

[Illustration:  C. H. Spurgeon.]

[Illustration:  Dr. Horatius Bonar.]

The death-roll from 1887 to 1897 is exceptionally heavy; in every department of science, art, literary and religious life, the loss has been great.  Many musicians have been taken from us since the well-beloved Jenny Lind Goldschmidt; Canon Sir E. A. Gore Ouseley, Sir G. Macfarren, Principal of the Royal Academy of Music, Rubinstein, Carrodus, and others.

[Illustration:  Rev. J. G. Wood.]