nsiderable influence
here, but gradually Victor Hugo's star ascended, and from the moment it
reached the zenith until now, he has been accounted the supreme poet of
France, and the greatest contemporary evangelist of the ideas of '89. He
is a Freethinker as well as a Republican; and it was inevitable that
the younger school of writers in England, who acknowledge him as a lofty
master, should drink from his inexhaustible spring the living waters of
Democracy and Freethought.

French influence on our very recent literature is evident in such
works as Mr. John Morley's Studies on Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot,
and Condorcet; Mr. Christie's monumental Life of Etienne Dolet, the
Freethought martyr; and Mr. Parton's new Life of Voltaire; all of which
demand and will amply requite our attention.

Such are the influences which have conspired to shape the literary
activities of the generation in which we live. Now Freethought, like a
subtle essence, penetrates everywhere. Every book betrays its presence,
and even the periodical literature of our age is affected by it. The
Archbishop of Canterbury laments that Christian men cannot introduce
the most respectable magazines into their homes without the risk of
poisoning the minds of their families with heretical ideas.

One of the signs that Freethought had begun to leaven the educated
classes was the publication of the famous "Essays and Reviews." The
heresy of that book was exceedingly small, but it roused a great storm
in the religious world and led to more than one clerical prosecution.
Another sign was the publication of Colenso's learned work on the
Pentateuch. This hard-working Colonial Bishop was denounced as a heretic
by the idler home Bishops, and Ruskin has said that they would have
liked to burn Colenso alive, and make Ludgate Hill easier for the
omnibuses with the cinders of him. An antagonist very different from the
Bishops was Mr. Matthew Arnold, who severely censured Colenso's whole
method of criticism, as a handling of religious questions in an
irreligious spirit. Mr. W. R. Greg admirably defended the Bishop, and
the controversy ended in a drawn battle.

But what has happened since? The same Matthew Arnold who censured
Colenso has himself published two remarkable works on "Literature and
Dogma" and "God and the Bible," written it is true on a different plan
from Colenso's, but containing a hundred times more heresy than the
Bishop crammed into all his big volumes.