The physical sciences have made marvelous advances; many brilliant discoveries have been made during the present and last generation, and many scientific men have brought much power of mind to bear on questions lying apart from their principal studies; among them are Sir David Brewster, Sir John Herschel, Sir John Playfair, Sir Charles Lyell, Hugh Miller, Buckland, and Professor Whewell.
SINCE 1860.
1. POETRY.—Matthew Arnold (b. 1822) has written some of the most refined verse of our day, and among critics holds the first rank. Algernon Swinburne (b. 1837) excels all living poets in his marvelous gift of rhythm and command over the resources of the language. Dante Rossetti (d. 1883) had great lyrical power; Robert Buchanan has large freedom and originality of style; Edwin Arnold has extraordinary popularity in the United States for his remarkable poem, "The Light of Asia," and for other poems on Oriental subjects; Lord Lytton ("Owen Meredith") has a place of honor among poets as the author of "Lucile" and other poems; William Morris writes in the choicest fashion of romantic narrative verse. Among other poets of the present generation whose writings are marked by excellences of various kinds are Edmund Gosse, Austin Dobson, Cosmo Monkhonse, Andrew Lang, Philip Marston, and Arthur O'Shaughnessy.
The poems of Jean Ingelow have a merited popularity; those of Adelaide Procter (d. 1864) are pervaded by a beautiful spirit of faith and hope; Christina Rossetti shows great originality and deep and serious feeling. The lyrics and dramas of Augusta Webster are marked by strength and breadth of thought; the ballads, sonnets, and other poems of Mary Robinson show that she possesses the true gift of song.
2. FICTION.—The writings of Mrs. Lewes, "George Eliot" (1815-1880), are the work of a woman of rare genius, and place her among the greatest novelists England has produced. They are in sympathy with all the varieties of human character, and written in a spirit of humanity that is allied with every honest aspiration.
Anthony Trollope (d. 1884) has produced many works remarkable for their
accurate pictures of English life and character. George Macdonald and
Wilkie Collins are novelists of great merit, as are William Black, Richard
Blackmore, Mrs. Oliphant, Edmund Yates, Justin McCarthy.
3. SCIENCE.—Herbert Spencer (b. 1820) as early as 1852 advanced the theory of the natural and gradual coalition of organic life upon this globe. In 1855, in his "Principles of Psychology," he gave a new exposition of the laws of mind, based upon this principle, and held that it is by experience, registered in the slowly perfecting nervous system, that the mental faculties have been gradually evolved through long courses of descent, each generation inheriting all that had been previously gained, and adding its own increment to the sum of progress; that all knowledge, and even the faculties of knowing, originate in experience, but that the primary elements of thought are a priori intuitions to the individual derived from ancestral experience. Thus the intuitional and experience hypotheses, over which philosophers had so long disputed, were here for the first time reconciled. This work, the first permanent scientific result of the application of the law of evolution, formed a turning-point in the thought of the scientific world. Spencer's prospectus of a philosophical system, in which the principles of evolution were applied to the subjects of life, mind, society, and morals, appeared in 1858, maturely elaborated in its scientific proofs and applications, thus preceding the works of other evolutionary writers, the most distinguished of whom, Charles Darwin (1809-1883), has been more identified in the popular mind with the theories of evolution than Spencer himself. The writings of Darwin have had a wider influence and have been the subject of more controversy than those of any other contemporary writer. In his "Origin of Species" he accounts for the diversities of life on our globe by means of continuous development, without the intervention of special creative fiats at the origin of each species, and to this organic evolution he added the important principle of natural selection. He may be regarded as the great reformer of biology and the most distinguished naturalist of the age. Tyndall (b. 1810) has done more than any other writer to popularize great scientific truths. Huxley (b. 1825) stands foremost among physiologists and naturalists.
Among numerous other writers distinguished in various branches of science
a few only can be here named. Walter Bagehot writes on Political Society;
Alexander Bain on Mind and Body; Henry Maudsley on Brain and Mind; Norman
Lockyer on Spectrum Analysis; and Sir John Lubbock on Natural History.
4. MISCELLANEOUS.—The most distinguished historian of the times is James Anthony Froude (b. 1818), who, in his "Short Studies," shows the same vigor of thought and power of description that render his history so fascinating. The histories of John Richard Green are valuable for their original research, and have a wide celebrity. Max Müller has rendered important services to the sciences of Philology and Ethnology, by his researches in Oriental languages and literatures. Lecky is eminent for his history of "Rationalism in Europe" and "History of Morals." Leslie Stephen, John Morley, and Addington Symonds are distinguished in various departments of criticism and history. Justin McCarthy, in his "History of our own Times," has skillfully presented an intellectual panorama of the period.
Hamerton writes on Art and on general topics with keen and critical observation. Lewes (d. 1878) is the able expounder of the philosophy of Comte. Frances Power Cobbe, in her "Intuitive Morals" and other works, shows strong reasoning powers and great earnestness of purpose. John Stuart Mill (d. 1873) holds a high place as a writer on Political Economy, Liberty, and on the Subjection of Women. The periodicals and newspapers of the day show remarkable intellectual ability, and represent the best contemporary thought in England in all departments.