THE VICTORIAN NOVELISTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14109, 10 July 1909, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE VICTORIAN NOVELISTS.

FIVE GREAT NAMES.

How wonderful has been the evolution, how wide the range, of the Victorian novel! From "Pickwick" to "The Egoist," from "Vanity Fair" to "Jude, the Obscure!" What a growth it marks in the world's self-conscioasness, self-realisation! The whole intellectual history of the period may be said to be written in the five names —Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Meredith, Hardy. ;

There is a curious symmetry in the grouping of these writers. • '-

First we have a pair of quite unphilosophic character-creators, accepting without demur the moral standards and the religious formulas of their day, and criticising society from the point of view of a mild humanitarian radicalism.

Then comes the great intellectual awakening of the late 'fifties; -and almost simultaneously with it there appears, in George Eliot, the connecting link between the early and the late Victorians. Her philosophic grasp is immensely superior to that of Dickens or Thackeray ; but her criticism of life is purely ethical, though for her standards of conduct she seeks scientific rather than religious or merely traditioul sanctions.

Finally we have in Meredith and Hardy a pair of artists of a profoundly philosophical cast of mind, each viewing life from a metaphysical standpoint, and. the one arraigning, the.' other defending, the methods of nature and the scheme of things.

The great genius of the five, beyond all comparison, was the man of smallest philosophical culture or .speculative intelligenceneed I name Charles Dickens? None the less astonishing, however, is the intellectual progress marked by the transition from the two great novelists of the 'forties to the two great novelists of the ' nineties. It is the transition from' a world naively accepted to a universe reflectively realised, weighed, and appraise^ , YEAR BOOKS. Among, year books recently published are Burdet't's "Hospitals and Charities, 1909," and "The Naval Annual, 1909." "The Hospital Annual, in addition to the vast amount of statistical information dealt with, has a special chapter on the volume of charity.. It is quite clearly shown, in reference to the urgent appeal which has been made on behalf of some of the great London hospitals, that the total amount given to hospitals and charities in the United Kingdom is sufficient tor their maintenance, and that a better distribution is what is really needed. In the chapter on hospital construction, colonial readers will- be interested to learn that a Berlin hospital, built of wood in 1872. with the idea that its wards should be periodically burnt as they became saturated with septic material, is being reconstructed with old wards still standing. — It is deducted from; this that " with careful and eftcient management and strict attention to asepsis, even a wooden hut can be safely ised for as long as the materials continue structurally sound."

In the " Naval Annual," edited by Mr. T. A. Brassoy, the latest information upon the navy building of the nations is given, while the various articles display the keen interest being taken in-naval affairs. In exposing Defects of Administration," Admiral Henderson and Mr. Herbert Russell, the collaborators, Ml us that the system of administration hac converted the dockyards into a huge bureaucracy/ and that it was in consequence .almost' nerveless: —

" To illustrate this, it may be mentioned that in 1902 Devonport "yard possessed only two or three, typewriters, only . the nucleus of a telephone system, and no shorthand writers. There was no efficiently organised means of communication, either by land or by water, for the conveyance of close upon 10,000 . men employed in this dockyard or the materials they used. No internal postal system existed, and fully 200 separate agencies were' employing labour for the transmission of messages, notes, and books, now done by five boys and the part service of one man. All these agencies, again, supplied themselves with materials in the most primitive of fashions, instead of their being economically distributed "according to modern methods. The superior and subordinate officers virtually lived in their offices, the consequence of which was that the supervision of workman: was left to the inspectors and chargemen, whose authority, being »insufficient, resulted in want of proper supervision, with all the concurrent evils of idleness, waste, neglect of apprentices, and the like. Betting agencies were even in existence, and,carried on during working hours." . *,

AUSTRALIA AND * NEW ZEALAND. The United Kingdom imported in 1906 27,000,000 odd pounds' worth of wool, and £11,514,733 .came from Australia, £6,959,836 from New Zealand and the rest from all the other countries of the world put together. And wool comes from all the States—wool and wheat and wine and frozen mutton, which, . like the butter, Englishmen mostly eat as best Southdown; and there is timber, and there is fruit, and there are gold and silver and tin. All this from the land that our fathers called barren,'of which troubled Governor Phillip wrote a little over 100 years ago— "All my sheep are dead. Sheep do not thrive in this country." But he was an exile, he and the men who came with . him, ever turning their eyes to the north, longing for the days to pass when they might go home. And these new men are a new notion. It is no longer in the making; it is made. They have not the longing for the land of the north tugging at their heart-strings; they would not count themselves more blessed "to be in Englandthey are iv exiles. Theirs are the blue skies and the golden sunshine, the warm winds and the air like champagne. This is their country, to be loved with an abiding love, and they would have it great among; the nations of the Empire ana the world. — Gaunt, in the Overseas Empire Supplement of the Strand Magazine.