who have drawn attention off mere umbilicular contemplation such as Morris, Rossetti, and Swinburne. We have accordingly to trace in the succeeding years the rise of new schools of thought, as well as the several attempts of religious writers to accommodate traditional religion to the new light thrown upon it. This will take us through twenty years, up to the memorable years 1873-'74, when the different schools came into open antagonism.
To trace out the different lines of thought with any fullness would require a separate study; as I am simply passing over the ground with the view of setting a single book in a clearer light, I must content myself with mentioning the names of a few leading works, with their dates. The rise of the evolution school was heralded in 1845 by Robert Chambers's "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," an expansion of the Lamarckian theories of natural development. But the writings by which what we now mean by evolution were popularized fall within the present period. "The Origin of Species" appeared in 1859, Spencer's "First Principles" in 1862, Huxley's "Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature" in 1863, and "The Descent of Man" in 1871. With this school also we may class Max Müller's "Lectures on the Science of Language," which appeared in 1861, as tending to widen the conception of evolution. Of the effects of this new view of life upon religious thought it is not too much to say that, if it cut the ground from under the intuitionalist theory of right and wrong, and of the origin of conscience, to the skeptic in regard to supernaturalism it gave a prospect and a future glorious with hope. To many minds the ascent of man serves a more glorious conception than his fall. The door was opened for a pantheistic view of the universe, and this tendency was enhanced by the influence of Ruskin, who was already writing in 1850. George Eliot, who has exercised a distinct influence upon the age by popularizing the ethical side of positivism, and showing men that it gives a work-a-day theory of life, began to publish in the year 1858.
What has been called the fleshly, and more recently the æsthetic school of poetry, is best represented by the names of Swinburne, William Morris, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Swinburne's works are too numerous to mention, but his "Chastelard" appeared in 1865, his "Poems and Ballads," of unhappy notoriety, in the following year; Morris's "Defense of Guinevere," his first work, appeared in 1858, his "Earthly Paradise" in 1868; Rossetti's first celebrated volume of "Poems" appeared in 1870. Of this school it may be said that, without being brought into actual contact with supernaturalism, the tendency of their writings was to take men's thoughts into a different field, to consecrate the passions and sentiment, to revive with a difference the old Greek modes of looking at man and his destiny in the world. With this school we must rank the important name of Walt Whitman, whose first series of "Leaves of Grass" came in 1855. Of course his influ-
