case a definite purpose to sweep away error and to
reveal the underlying truth of human life. So the novel sought to do for
society in this age precisely what Lyell and Darwin sought to do for
science, that is, to find the truth, and to show how it might be used to
uplift humanity. Perhaps for this reason the Victorian Age is emphatically
an age of realism rather than of romance,--not the realism of Zola and
Ibsen, but a deeper realism which strives to tell the whole truth, showing
moral and physical diseases as they are, but holding up health and hope as
the normal conditions of humanity.

It is somewhat customary to speak of this age as an age of doubt and
pessimism, following the new conception of man and of the universe which
was formulated by science under the name of involution. It is spoken of
also as a prosaic age, lacking in great ideals. Both these criticisms seem
to be the result of judging a large thing when we are too close to it to
get its true proportions, just as Cologne Cathedral, one of the world's
most perfect structures, seems to be a shapeless pile of stone when we
stand too close beneath its mighty walls and buttresses. Tennyson's
immature work, like that of the minor poets, is sometimes in a doubtful or
despairing strain; but his _In Memoriam_ is like the rainbow after storm;
and Browning seems better to express the spirit of his age in the strong,
manly faith of "Rabbi Ben Ezra," and in the courageous optimism of all his
poetry. Stedman's _Victorian Anthology_ is, on the whole, a most inspiring
book of poetry. It would be hard to collect more varied cheer from any age.
And the great essayists, like Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin, and the great
novelists, like Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, generally leave us with a
larger charity and with a deeper faith in our humanity.

So also the judgment that this age is too practical for great ideals may be
only a description of the husk that hides a very full ear of corn. It is
well to remember that Spenser and Sidney judged their own age (which we now
consider to be the greatest in our literary history) to be altogether given
over to materialism, and to be incapable of literary greatness. Just as
time has made us smile at their blindness, so the next century may correct
our judgment of this as a material age, and looking upon the enormous
growth of charity and brotherhood among us, and at the literature which
expresses our faith in men, may judge the Victori