him, not as we others would treat it, but always with a grasp and easy power which of itself gives a keen pleasure. And this wilful strength makes him somewhat difficult to characterise; it is quite as likely at any moment that it may turn to the fantastic as to the reasonable side, and it is even a little impatient of the intricacies of character-painting. We look back to the personages of his dramas without any warm individual feeling. We are deeply interested in them so long as they are in his hands, but they have no separate life, except, perhaps, in the case of David Dodd, the simple, faithful, generous sailor, whose beauty of nature makes even his impatient creator pause. To our own thinking, the story, one of his briefest, Love me Little, Love me Long,' is one of the finest of Charles Reade's productions; but we do not think that the public has confirmed that opinion. 6 writers we have mentioned-to wit, John Ruskin. He is one of those who can never be dissociated from his works, or rather his works from him. They are all pervaded with a delicate personality-fastidious, generous, querulous, tender, cruel-the very soul of an imaginative and susceptible being seeing everything through a glamour of genius and feeling, prejudice and prepossession. We cannot enter into his principles of art, which are too absolute and too capricious to have had much living effect upon the art of his period, and in which he has mingled so much extravagance that the sober-minded have been as often revolted as the enthusiastic have been impressed. It is no doubt owing in some degree to Mr Ruskin's continued and eloquent partisanship that Turner's great merits have been so universally and promptly acknowledged; but on the other hand, it is perhaps equally owing to him that other artists, following the school once called pre-Raphaelite, over the creation of which he presided, have lessened their own fame by mannerisms and monotonies, which are not to be desired in Art, as they do not exist in Nature. But when that little has been said, there remains no name in modern English literature which we could less dispense with. One of the greatest masters of style who has ever employed English speech, and who has employed it beautifully, worthily, with a thousand touches that go to the heart, though with some which tempt a smile, and some which have the gift to enrage the adversary, he is still exercising that gift, with perhaps something of an old man's garrulity, and an extreme of gentle egotism which requires much tenderness on the part of the reader. But the tenderness happily exists, and this most fanci ful of old men eloquent does not appeal to it in vain. Space fails us to record as we ought the wonderful development of journalism and periodical writing of all kinds which has taken place within these fifty years. The petty newspaper of the provincial town, which Dickens made fun of at the beginning of the halfcentury, has dropped away into the obscurest regions, and half-a-dozen ambitious and influential organs of opinion have sprung up into its place. In London itself what a difference! Those correspondents that dart across the world at a moment's notice to supply our breakfast - tables with the latest intelligence, sometimes by incredible feats of horsemanship, sometimes at the risk of their lives, had no existence in those peaceful days in which, by the way, there existed no telegraph to convey their messages; and, we might add-which is for us a less cheerful aspect of the subject-no wars to report upon ! The development of the newspaper, and of the profession of journalism, is indeed subject enough for as many pages as we have to devote to literature in general. And it is possible that, did we enter into the subject, we should have something more to say than admiration and wonder. It is a very responsible and dangerous business to prepare in haste, as must be done, a facile literature of every day, so abundant in quantity as to make a recognisable claim upon the time of those who feel bound to keep up with the opinions and sentiments of the day. To many such it becomes more and more all the literature they can attain, and this is not a very comfortable outlook. But the level of good writing in the newspapers is on the whole high, and represents a large amount of fine intellect and good training, somewhat sacrificed for an inadequate end. And in her Majesty's reign there has arisen a genial power, a merry moralist who has whipped us many a rascal off the scene, and laughed down many a folly, and jeered impartially at all political parties, and at the pets of fashion, and at the heroes of the crowd-but never failed, amid all its quips and jests, to give honour to the worthy, and never at the noisiest of its mirth mocked at goodness, or suggested any unclean thing or thought. We are proud to think that though he has had many imitators, and every foreign capital has something after his model, only within our own island could Mr Punch be what he is. We have crowded into these pages as complete a survey as possible of the literature of Queen Victoria's reign. Our Royal Mistress has as much honour of her subjects in this way as any monarch that ever sat on the throne of Great Britain before her. And let us not forget that to this abundant and noble literature the Queen has added certain sketches of her own which will not be the least sought after by posterity, and upon which some historian of the future will no doubt seize with enthusiasm, making out from them, like a new Macaulay, a portrait which will be very delightful to the imagination,—the portrait of an ingenious and charming sensibility and womanly sweetness, which with all the force of contrast will shine the more from amid the splendour of a throne; but which will not, as we know, do justice to the admirable good sense, the great experience, and all the statesmanlike endowments which fifty years of devoted work and ceaseless interest in all the concerns of her people have refined and developed in our Queen. THE RESTORERS OF FLORENCE. TIME and revolution have in no way affected the mercurial excitable nature of the Italians-they are the same impulsive people which they were in the middle ages. Witness the state of wild excitement the whole population was in when Verdi's new opera was to be produced at La Scala. Had the great maestro been the hero of a hundred battles, returning from a successful campaign, his reception at Milan could not have been more enthusiastic, or the interest in him more intense. And here in Florence the one topic of conversation is the grand ceremonial which was observed when the new façade of the Duomo was uncovered in May: the glory of Santa Maria del Fiore has for many months occupied the Italian nation as the jubilee does our own. Nor, indeed, is the subject unworthy of this deep interest. It is a great event, after the lapse of five centuries, to have finished the noble design of Brunelleschi, which Michael Angelo would not pretend to surpass in St Peter's "Io faro la sorella Più grande già ma non più bella." The completion of the facciata of the Duomo has been the work of years, and it may also be said the work of the nation. From the day of its foundation, at the close of the thirteenth century, this cathedral has been regarded with affection by all the Italian nationalities, and contributions towards its completion have poured in from the most distant parts, and from all classes of the nation. Would that a similar interest in the glory of our public monuments existed in England! When will our Par liament emulate the language of the noble public decree by which the authorities ordered the building of the cathedral-"We command Arnolfo to make a design that may harmonise with the opinion of many wise men in this city and state, who think that we should not engage in any enterprise unless we intend to make the result correspond with the noblest design which is approved by the united will of many citizens." So the glorious work, undertaken in this noble spirit, and carried on by successive generations with the same reverential love, was at last completed, and in May the beautiful façade was exposed to view. While the richest and most delicate tinted marbles have been used, great care has been taken to keep the new work in harmony with the other walls of the cathedral; and to ensure this, it was necessary to remove many of the old slabs of the intarsiata where the marble had been worn away by decay, or damaged by the influence of the weather. It can be judged by this partial renovation how admirable was the effect of the whole when the coverings were removed. There was exposed to the admiring masses the "lavoro di poesia," a vast marble tracery of fruits, flowers, garlands, and wreaths, mingled with lovely faces, the work of innumerable sculptors and artists, who all undertook it as a work of love, many of them, like Settigagno, accepting only his daily expenses. Nor was this disinterestedness limited to the noble army of workers. The beautiful, rich, variegated marbles of Serravezza, Siena, and Prato were presented as a gift, and even in many cases their The admirers of Prout may mourn transport was paid. Florence over the sacrifice of picturesque made every preparation for the great occasion: the Italian kingdom was represented there by all its various, and at one time hostile, nationalities, and interesting was it to see the crowds collected in the City of the Lily in all that variety of costumes which has not yet disappeared in the remote provinces. From the wooded glens of the Apennines, even from the distant Alban hills and rugged Calabria, came pilgrims to glad den their hearts by the sight of the crowning glory of Florence. Happy is it for a nation when its peoples possess a heart which beats quicker at the sight of the trophies and triumphs, not of war but of peace. Great men have always felt the importance of carrying out great national works. The whole of Europe bears testimony to the imperialism of Rome. The great Napoleon well understood this when he carried out his gigantic plans without and within the walls of every city he conquered. Even Napoleon III., wherever he dwelt, left behind him some monument of noble design. He felt that— "From works like these a nation's glory springs; These are imperial acts, and worthy kings." It is true that Paris, by its charges, lost greatly in its historic interest and associations, when its old streets of shabby dilapidated houses were cleared away by the master-hand of Haussmann; but it must be conceded that light was let into dark and noisome places. And buildings, if not of much architectural beauty, at least on a grand scale, replaced dilapidated tenements, whose only beauty was derived from the ravages of time and the overgrowth of ages. decay, but, on the whole, the change is for the better. It is one of the many lamentable results of the new Republic in France, that it seems to have taken all good taste and all interest in the past out of the people. No improvements are now carried on, whole edifices associated with the glories of France are permitted to fall into decay. Monsieur Grévy presiding over the destinies of a nation whose history is full of the glorious traditions of a long line of kings, is not a more striking proof of the change in the spirit of the nation, than the ruins of the Tuileries, which remain as a memorial of the wild excesses of the populace, where "dust to dust" applies to the proudest edifices as well as to their creators. The country in which at present there is the greatest demand for architects and builders is Italy. If new brooms do not always sweep clean, at any rate they sweep away. The two cities in which the work of destruction and construction are being carried on with untiring energy are Rome and Florence. In Rome a new city has been created on the Quirinal; huge squares, with rectangular streets, are intended by their names to render homage to the great deeds of the founders of Young Italy. On the Quirinal, fortunately, with the exception of the Baths of Diocletian, there has been little to destroy; and as at least 200,000 have been added to the population since Rome was made the capital, this congeries of brick and rubble must be endured. Now there exist two distinct cities, as there are two distinct sovereigns, in Rome, and three Romes, the Rome of the Vatican, the Rome of the Quirinal, the Rome of the Forum and Palatine. If Gibbon had ar thought what was intended only for a more lucid and attractive statement of the work done by others; and thus perhaps wore out more quickly than otherwise might have been, the strength and life of the writer, whose forces were unequal, and whose time was too short for such a task. tion in the literary world, and the amiable recluse fouud himself famous to his great surprise and considerable embarrassment. However, he took his fame with much seriousness, and without any misgivings as to the result. Buckle was one of the first of the band of philosophical thinkers rejecting the creed of Christianity and even of Theism, which have made so great an appearance in our day; and his name naturally leads us to those of others in many respects more remarkable than his own, who have given to our philosophical literature a new development, and who have established Natural Science, with all the philosophies dependent on it, as one of the greatest subjects and most intimate occupations of the time. We have spoken (with the one exception of Carlyle) only of works of English history. But the historical writers of the half-century have not been confined to this subject. The great work of Grote upon ancient Greece has for a long time put every competitor out of the field, and become in its weighty conscientiousness and power the chief authority upon that ever-interesting theme. We have already referred to the most prodigious piece of work of all, a History which has been perhaps more popular than any big book of its dimensions ever was, and which was for a long time almost as productive as an estate, a most valuable piece of literary property, Sir Archibald Alison's History of Europe.' The History of Civilisation' of the late Mr Buckle was still greater in its conception, and could it ever have been carried out, would no doubt have reached to some prodigious number of volumes, worthy of the huge collection of books in which its author had built himself up with a curious symbolical fitness. For though his theme was mankind, his knowledge was of books alone, and his work is full of those strange ignorances and clever mistakes to which a mind trained in the atmosphere of a literary hothouse, out of reach of all practical contact with the nature he attempted to define and chronicle, is naturally subject. The appearance of his first volume, however, the introduction to his vast subject, created a great sensa- but limited range. We have again to recur to the name of Carlyle when we enter, or rather before we enter, this field. His historical works, though so remarkable, perhaps scarcely took so strong a hold upon the mind of his generation as those which for want of a better title we must call philosophical. He had no system of philosophy, however, to set forth, but rather the mind and thoughts upon all things in heaven and earth of one of the most remarkable of human beings, a man half prophet, half iconoclast, in whom a devout heart, instinct with all the lore of a cottage-taught religion, and the austere morality and rustic intolerance of a Scotch peasant, were linked with a spirit which had caught fire at that of Goethe, and had thrown off all allegiance of faith-a spirit full of sardonic humour and powers of mockery and vituperation unrivalled, fiercely unsympathetic with all that was uncongenial to his nature, while tender to every touch of feeling within its own intense The pro |