nstruction, the most perfect of her novels, and
Silas Marner of her shorter stories. Her analytic habit gained more
and more upon her as she wrote. _Middlemarch_, in some respects her
greatest book, lacks the unity of her earlier novels, and the story
tends to become subordinate to the working out of character stories and
social problems. The philosophic speculations, which she shared with
her husband, were seemingly unfavorable to her artistic growth, a
circumstance which {280} comes apparent in her last novel, _Daniel
Deronda_, 1877. Finally in the _Impressions of Theophrastus Such_,
1879, she abandoned narrative altogether, and recurred to that type of
"character" books which we have met, as a flourishing department of
literature in the 17th century, represented by such works as Earle's
_Microcosmographie_ and Fuller's _Holy and Profane State_. The moral
of George Eliot's writings is not obtruded. She never made the
artistic mistake of writing a novel of purpose, or what the Germans
call a _tendenz-roman_; as Dickens did, for example, when he attacked
imprisonment for debt, in _Pickwick_; the poor laws, in _Oliver Twist_;
the Court of Chancery, in _Bleak House_; and the Circumlocution office,
in _Little Dorrit_.

Next to the novel, the essay has been the most overflowing literary
form used by the writers of this generation--a form, characteristic, it
may be, of an age which "lectures, not creates." It is not the essay
of Bacon, nor yet of Addison, nor of Lamb, but attempts a complete
treatment. Indeed, many longish books, like Carlyle's _Heroes and Hero
Worship_ and Ruskin's _Modern Painters_, are, in spirit, rather
literary essays than formal treatises. The most popular essayist and
historian of his time was Thomas Babington Macaulay, (1800-1859), an
active and versatile man, who won splendid success in many fields of
labor. He was prominent in public life as one of the leading orators
and writers of the Whig party. He sat many times in the House of
Commons, as member for Calne, for Leeds, and {281} for Edinburgh, and
took a distinguished part in the debates on the Reform bill of 1832.
He held office in several Whig governments, and during his four years'
service in British India, as member of the Supreme Council of Calcutta,
he did valuable work in promoting education in that province, and in
codifying the Indian penal law. After his return to England, and
especially after the publication of his _Histor