was increased afterwards to 90,000. This was followed by The People's Edition of Standard English Authors; Chambers's Miscellany; Chambers's Educational Course; Papers for the People, etc. Then came the Encyclopædia of English Literature; Encyclopædia for the People; Information for the People; the Book of Days, etc.

The sales of these various publications have been enormous. In connection with this, it should be said that the works which they have thus spread so widely are of a kind to do good. There is not probably a line in all that they have sent forth to the world which a good man would desire to expunge, while the manifest tendency of it all has been to elevate the moral and intellectual character of the readers.

CHARLES KNIGHT, 1791-1873, a native of Windsor, distinguished as an editor and a publisher. The most prominent of his publications are Knight's Quarterly; the Penny Cyclopædia, afterwards recast and enlarged into the English Cyclopædia; The Pictorial Shakespeare; and The Popular History of England. Knight was one of the first members of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and, as such, published, at his own risk, The Penny Magazine, and The Library of Entertaining Knowledge.

REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN, 1813 was born at Comrie, Perthshire, Scotland. He was educated partly at Glasgow College, and partly at the United Secession Hall. He has been a very voluminous writer, but has been more ambitious of quantity in his productions than of quality. A dangerous facility of expression, unrestrained by a severe taste, has led him too often into what certainly approaches bombast. "He is sometimes happy in his metaphors, and apt in his allusions, but is more likely to be extravagant in the one and grotesque in the other."-Allibone. His publications are: Gallery of Literary Portraits, in Three Series or Parts; The Bards of the Bible; The Martyrs, Heroes, and Bards of the Scottish Covenant: The Grand Discovery; The History of a Man; The Book of British Poesy. Mr. Gilfillan also has edited a uniform library edition of the British poets, extending to a large number of volumes.

Tupper.

MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER, 1810

had for a time a very high

repute as an author, but has now fallen into general neglect.

Mr. Tupper studied at the Charter-House School and at Oxford, and entered upon the profession of the law. This he soon relinquished for the more congenial and lucrative vocation of letters.

If success is to be gauged by financial profits and the number of volumes sold, Mr. Tupper is the most successful writer of his generation. The almost incredible statement has been made, that up to 1863 500,000 copies of the Proverbial Philosophy had been sold in America alone. Future generations will have hard work in believing that the same American public that devoured such an immeuse amount of farrago was letting Hawthorne struggle painfully into acknowledged existence.

Besides the Proverbial Philosophy, Mr. Tupper has published a long series of works of equal merit, some in prose, others in verse. Among his novels may be signalized The Crock of Gold, The Twins, Stephen Langton, a romance of the days of King John. His poetry is chiefly in the form of ballad, sonnet, and ode, and comprises a number of collections. He has even had the temerity to compose a poem entitled Geraldine, a sequel to Coleridge's Christabel, and an Ode to Shakespeare on the occasion of the tercentenary anniversary of the great dramatist's birth.

In style, Mr. Tupper is eccentric and yet prosy, and in matter commonplace. There is nothing exceptionable in what he says. On the contrary, it is good, sound doctrine; but the milk is so diluted as to be unfit even for babes. For years Mr. Tupper was the standing butt of the London press; but as he appears to be withdrawing from the arena of publication, it is to be hoped that the vacancy thus created may not speedily be refilled.

Gleig.

REV. GEORGE R. GLEIG, 1795 writers of the day.

is one of the most prolific

Mr. Gleig is a clergyman of the Church of England, and a son of Bishop Gleig. He was educated at Oxford, and at first entered the army. He served in the Peninsula, and afterwards in the United States, and was wounded at the capture of Washington. Subsequently he took orders, and, in 1846, he was appointed Chaplain-General; he also devised a scheme for the education of soldiers, and was made Inspector-General of the military schools. He has been extremely busy with his pen.

The following are his principal works: The Subaltern; Allan Breck, 3 vols.; County Courts, 2 vols.; Chronicles of Waltham, 3 vols.; The Hussar, 2 vols.; The Only Daughter, 3 vols.; The Light Dragoon, 2 vols.; Soldier's Help to Divine Truth; Guide to the Lord's Supper; Sermons for Advent, Christmas, and the Epiphany; History of the Bible, 2 vols., 8vo; British Military Commanders, 3 vols.; History of British India, 4 vols.; Family History of England, 3 vols.; Traditions of Chelsea College, 3 vols.; Visit to Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, 3 vols.; Veterans of Chelsea Hospital, 3 vols.; Sale's Brigade in Afghanistan; Story of the Battle of Waterloo; Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans; Life of Sir Thomas Munro, 3 vols.; Life of Lord Clive; Life of Warren Hastings, 3 vols.

This list, which is still not complete, shows how very industrious Mr. Gleig must have been. Most of his writings, too, have been popular, and have deserved the fame which they received. But some of his books show signs of mere hack work,-done to order, and not for the assertion of truth. The book last named brought upon him a terrible castigation from the pen of Macaulay.

Harriet Martineau.

HARRIET MARTINEAU, 1802-1876, a native of Norwich, and a descendant of a Huguenot family, was a most prolific writer, on a wide range of subjects, from theology and positivism to sketches of travel.

Miss Martineau's earliest work was Devotional Exercices for the Young. This was followed by a series of popular tales, such as Christmas Day, The Rioters, Mary Campbell, &c. Miss Martineau visited the United States in 1835, and published, on her return to England, Society in America, and Retrospect of Western Travel. These were followed by other novels and stories, Deerbrook, The Hour and the Man, etc., an Introduction to the History of England during the Thirty Years' Peace, an abridged and free translation of Comte's Positivism, and many other miscellaneous works, as well as contributions to the English reviews and magazines.

Miss Martineau's writings are pleasant, her style is lively, almost piquant. She is, however, by no means accurate in statement or logical in reasoning, as is abundantly shown by her sketches of America.

JAMES MARTINEAU, 1805, brother of Harriet Martineau (a prominent Unitarian minister, and Professor of Philosophy in Manchester New College, London), is the author of several works of note, among which are Endeavors after Christian Life, Rationale of Religious Inquiry, and Lectures in defence of Unitarianism. In theology, Mr. Martinean may be called an orthodox Unitarian, holding the middle ground between Trinitarianism and the radical party.

Mrs. Fanny Kemble.

FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE, 1811 -, distinguished in early life as an actress, acquired still greater distinction afterwards by her Shakespeare Readings.

She was the daughter of the tragedian Charles Kemble, was born in London, and accompanied her father, in 1832, to the United States, where she was married to Pierce Butler. In 1849, she was divorced, and since that time has resumed her family name, being commonly known as Mrs. Fanny Kemble.

In addition to her histrionic talents, Mrs. Kemble is well known as an author. In 1832, she published Francis the First, an Historical Drama, written when she was only seventeen. In 1835, appeared her Journal of Travels in the United States; in 1837, The Star of Seville, a Drama; in 1844, a volume of Poems; and, in 1847, a Year of Consolation, descriptive of a tour through France and of a sojourn at Rome.

All Mrs. Kemble's writings evince vigor of thought and quickness of observation. Her Journal, when it first appeared, was severely criticized in England, as being in bad taste. The Poems have been highly praised in all quarters.

Mrs. Ellis.

wife of the well-known

MRS. SARAH (STICKNEY) ELLIS, 1812 missionary, Rev. William Ellis, has done for her generation a work similar in some respects to that done by Hannah More and by Maria Edgeworth in their days.

Her writings, like theirs, have had a higher aim than mere amusement; they are educational, in the broadest and best sense of the word. The principal works of Mrs. Ellis are: The Women of England; The Daughters of England; The Wives of England; Family Secrets; Pictures of Private Life; The Poetry of Life; Conversations on Human Nature; Home, or The Iron Rule; Temper and Temperament; Prevention Better than Cure; Random Hours, or Hints on the Formation of Character; Social Distinction, or Hearts and Homes; My Brother, or The Man of Many Friends; Look to the End, or The Bennetts Abroad; Fireside Tales; Summer and Winter in the Pyrenees; A Voice from the Vintage; Sons of the Soil, a Poem; The Island Queen, a Poem, etc. These various works of Mrs. Ellis fill over 30 vols.

"It is a comfort to think that in all things we are not retrograding. The talents which made Hannah More and Madame D'Arblay the idols of the literary world in their generation, would now secure them but a slender share of homage. The cultivation of the female mind has certainly advanced; and we greatly doubt if any woman of the last century could have written the Wives of England."-British Magazine.

Crabb Robinson.

HENRY CRABB ROBINSON, 1775–1867, is known almost exclusively by his memoirs, published after his death, under the title, Henry Crabb Robinson's Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence.

This work is one of the most interesting in the English language, for it is nothing less than a personal record of men and things, kept by one who was for seventy years intimately associated with the leading men and women of England, France, and Germany.

Mr. Robinson studied for five years in Germany, serving for a while as correspondent for the London Times. He also accompanied Sir John More's Corunna expedition in the same capacity. When upwards of thirty, he was admitted to the bar, and in the course of time was in the possession of a lucrative practice, from which he retired in 1828, to enjoy forty years of complete social and literary leisure.

While a young man in Germany, Robinson became acquainted with Goethe, Schiller, Madame de Staël, the Brentanos, Schlegel, Krubel, Wieland, and a host of others, then risen or rapidly rising into fame. He thus became the instrument, on his return, of presenting the claims of German literature to his countrymen. It would be impossible to enumerate here all the names that figure in Robinson's pages. He was very intimate with Lamb, the Wordsworths, Flaxman, Coleridge, Arnold, Bunsen, in fact, nearly all the literati and artists of the century, not to mention the magnates of the legal profession.

The diarist seems to have gone everywhere and seen every one. Without possessing literary abilities of his own, he was capable of sympathizing with and appreciating talent in others, while his genial manner and powers of conversation procured him a welcome in every house and made his own social entertainments, his well-known breakfasts, the most thoroughly agreeable of their kind in London, not even inferior to those of Rogers.

His Diary has no especial merits of style. It is a plain straightforward narrative, interspersed with bits of criticism or reflection. The great charm of the work consists in its simplicity approaching almost to naïveté, and its value consists in the picture which it presents of the growth of English society and letters. He who wishes to have a continuous, life-like presentment of the entire nineteenth century up to 1865, cannot do better than read this stupendous record, for such it really is. Not to every man is it given to live to the age of fourscore and ten with unimpaired faculties, mingling with the wisest and wittiest of three generations, and embodying the most pleasant experiences in an unbroken narrative.

The Brothers Mayhew.

The Brothers MAYHEW (Henry, Horace, Augustus, Thomas, and Edward), natives of London, have made valuable contributions to popular literature.

Henry Mayhew, 1812, was one of the founders of The London Punch, and the author of several works, partly humorous, partly serious. The best known are The Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys; The Story of the Peasant-Boy Philosopher, founded upon the Life of James Ferguson. But Henry Mayhew's greatest work by far is his London Labor and the London Poor. This is a faithful and minute portraiture of the highways and byways of the metropolis, with its swarming dens, its motley lower classes and their shifts for a living, their vices and their virtues. Both to the

ordinary reader and to the political economist, London Labor is a wonderfully suggestive book. The Great World of London is in some sense a continuation of London Labor.Horace Mayhew has been a contributor to Punch. His most popular works are: Model Men and Women, Change for a Shilling, Letters Left at the Pastry Cooks. In connection with his brother Augustus he also published a series of comic sketches, prominent among which are The Greatest Plague in Life, The Image of his Father, etc.-Augustus Mayhew was associated with Horace in the publication of a series of comic stories. He is also the author of Paved with Gold, an Unfashionable Novel.-Thomas Mayhew signalized himself by starting the Penny National Library, a series of books on all subjects, sold at a penny a volume. Mr. Mayhew was also editor of The Poor Man's Guardian, and contributor to many periodicals.-Edward Mayhew is author of several treatises upon the horse and the dog.

ALEXANDER MACKAY, is a native of Scotland and a prominent writer for the (London) Morning Chronicle. Mr. Mackay is best known to the American reader by his Western World, a three-volume work of travels in the United States, published in 1849. This work was favorably received both in England and in America, and was the best of its kind that had appeared up to that time.

GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA, 1827, the son of a Portuguese father and a Creole mother, has contributed voluminously to English periodicals and has travelled extensively. Since 1860 Mr. Sala has been editor of Temple Bar, a London magazine. Among his many works the most prominent perhaps are Ye Belle Alliance, a pantomime; A Journey in the North (Russia); The Baddington Peerage; Dutch Pictures; The Two Prima Donnas; Quite Alone, etc., etc.

Mr. Sala has contributed several pieces to Household Words. In 1865 he published two volumes of travels, entitled My Diary in America, giving an account of his adventures as War Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph during the war in 1863-4. He has published recently Rome, Venice, and Other Wanderings, and Charles Lamb's Complete Works and Correspondence, with an Essay on Lamb's Genius. Mr. Sala is a very lively, entertaining writer, and a correspondent of the W.-H.-Russell order, although not equal to the latter.

Albert Smith.

ALBERT SMITH, 1816-1860, was an attractive and popular humorous writer of his day.

His earliest sketch of note was his Jasper Buddle, or Confessions of a DissectingRoom Porter. His contributions to Punch and other periodicals were very numerous. Among them are the Physiology of Evening Parties, The Natural History of the Gent, Stuck-up People, etc. Smith obtained his chief reputation, however, by his public entertainments, in which he accompanied his panoramic representations with a running commentary of wit and clever description. The first of these exhibitions, called The Overland Mail, was soon followed by The Ascent of Mont Blanc. This was the delight of many thousand audiences in England and America for several years, and was repeated for the last time only a day or two before Smith's death. His China was also successful, but not to the same degree.

GEORGE WALTER THORNBURY, 1828 cellaneous writer.

has been a prolific mis

His works may be arranged, somewhat loosely, into three groups-novels, biographical notices, and sketches of travel. Among the novels are the Buccaneers (the