the last of the men of Edinburgh? No! The drain may still be southwards; Scotland now subserves, politically at least, the higher unity of Great Britain, just as that unity in its turn subserves a larger unity still, not so obviously carved out in the body of the surrounding world. At the time when Scotland was united to her great neighbor, she was made partaker of an intellectual accumulation and an inheritance of institutions, far richer, measured by the mode of extension, than she had to offer to that neighbor in return; and since that period, while much of the effort of Scotland has been in continuation of her own separate development, much has necessarily and justly been ruled by the law of her fortunate partnership. And so for the future, it may be the internal Scotticism, working on British, or on still more general objects, and not the Scotticism that works only on Scottish objects of thought, that may be in demand in literature as well as in other walks. But while Scotland is true to herself, and while nature in her and her social conditions cooperate to impart to her sons such an education as heretofore, there needs be no end to her race of characteristic men, nor even to her home-grown and home-supported literature. And, if so of Scotland at large, so relatively of the city that is her centre. While the traditions of Edinburgh

are not forgotten, nor her monuments destroyed, nor her beauties eradicated; while the Castle still frowns in the midst, and the Lion of Arthur's Seat still keeps guard, and the wooded Corstorphines lie soft on one side, and the Pentlands loom larger behind, and the same circle of objects surrounds the ravished sight by day, and at night the lamp-lit darkness of the city's own heights and hollows is one glittering picturesque, and far off Inchkeith light flashes and disappears, piercing this nocturnal picturesque intermittingly, as with the gleam of a distant mystery; so long, if but human will and industry answer as they ought, may this city keep up her intellectual succession. There are great ones gone, and nature abhors duplicates; but

"Other spirits there are, standing apart

Upon the forehead of this town to come."

LECTURE IV.

BRITISH NOVELISTS SINCE SCOTT.

ENUMERATION OF BRITISH NOVELISTS OF THE LAST FORTY-FIVE YEARS STATISTICS OF NOVEL-WRITING DURING THIS PERIOD — CLASSIFICATION OF RECENT NOVELS INTO THIRTEEN KINDSSIR LYTTON BULWER'S PROPOSED CLASSIFICATION OF NOVELS,

AND HIS OWN VERSATILITY FASHIONABLE NOVELISTS-DICKENS AND THACKERAY, AS REPRESENTATIVES OF A NEW ERA IN THE HISTORY OF THE BRITISH NOVEL-THE TWO COMPARED AS ARTISTS-COMPARED AS ETHICAL TEACHERS-REALISTIC ART AND ROMANTIC ART IN NOVELS-IMITATIONS OF DICKENS AND THACKERAY - THE YEAR 1848 AN IMPORTANT YEAR TO DATE FROM, IN LITERARY AS WELL AS IN POLITICAL HISTORY-PERSEVERING SPIRIT OF REALISM IN RECENT PROSE FICTIONS, AND APPLICATION OF THIS SPIRIT TO THE REPRESENTATION OF

FACTS PECULIARLY CONTEMPORARY; MISS BRONTE, ETC.GREAT DEVELOPMENT OF THE NOVEL OF PURPOSE, AS SHOWN IN SECTARIAN NOVELS, NOVELS OF THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER, NOVELS CURATIVE OR SATIRICAL OF SKEPTICISM, ETC. — MR. KINGSLEY AND THE AUTHOR OF "TOM BROWN"- INCREASE OF THE POETICAL SPIRIT IN NOVELS-SPECULATIONS AS TO THE NOVEL OF THE FUTURE, AND DESIDERATA IN NOVEL-WRITING.

THE British Novelists since Scott are a very numerous body. Among them may be reckoned some of those mentioned in my last Lecture as having preceded Scott in the field of Prose Fiction

-particularly Mrs. Opie, Godwin, the two Miss Porters, Miss Edgeworth, Lady Morgan, and Mr. Maturin. Though these had all preceded Scott as writers of prose fiction, they continued to write novels after the author of Waverley had become the acknowledged king of that species of literature; and some of them were not less affected than their juniors by his surpassing influence. Then, in the list of British novelists who made their appearance during the eighteen years in which the Waverley novels were in progress, some very shortly after the series had been begun, and others just as it was closing, and Scott was retiring from the scene,

I count no fewer than thirty-five names of some past or present note - to wit, in Scotland, or of Scottish birth, and under the immediate shadow of the author of Waverley, John Galt, Mrs. Johnstone, Miss Ferrier, the Ettrick Shepherd, Allan Cunningham, Scott's son-in-law Lockhart, Professor Wilson, Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, Andrew Picken, and David M. Moir; in Ireland, or of Irish birth, Mr. Thomas Colley Grattan, Banim, Crofton Croker, Gerald Griffin, and William Carleton; and in England, and chiefly of English birth, Godwin's daughter Mrs. Shelley, Lady Caroline Lamb, Mr. Peacock, Thomas Hope, Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook and his brother Dr. James Hook, James Morier, Mr. Lister, Mr. Plumer Ward, Mr. Gleig,

Mr. Horace Smith, Miss Mitford, Miss Landon, Mr. Disraeli, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Mrs. Gore, Captain Marryat, Mr. James, and Mrs. Trollope. The majority of these, it will be observed, survived Scott; and not a few of them, though they had taken their places as novel-writers while Scott was alive, attained their full celebrity in that capacity after Scott was gone. In the group of some ten or twelve active novel-writers upon whom the future hopes of the British novel were supposed to rest in 1832, the year of Scott's death, were Theodore Hook, Miss Mitford, Mr. Disraeli, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Mrs. Gore, Mr. James, and Mrs. Trollope. Several of these are still with us, and have certainly done more for the novel, in the matter of quantity at least, than could have been expected from them,- Sir Bulwer Lytton having produced in all some five-and-twenty novels; Mrs. Gore and Mrs. Trollope I know not how many; Mr. James I know not how many; and Mr. Disraeli having escaped similar productiveness only by that series of events which diverted his attention to politics, and has made him a British minister. To this group of novelists left in the field at Scott's death, there have been added, in the course of the quarter of a century which has elapsed since then, a little legion of new recruits. I will not venture on a complete list of their