The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-06-25
SPIRIT OF THE PRESS.
Editorial Opinions Of the Leading Journals
upon Current Topics Compiled Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
AFTER DICKENS. MHO2

From the Louisville Journal
lady correspondent asks us whether An-
thony Trollope, Charles Reade, or Wilkie
Collins will succeed to the place at the head
of English fiction made vacant by the death
of Charles Dickens. This is a strange ques-
ton to come from woman, and shows our
correspondent, if she will excuse the seeming
ungallsntry of saying so, either lily read in
fictitious literature or inappreciative in
judging its quality. No one with the least
critical insight would SO much as consider the
claims of such writer's as Trollope. Reade,
and Collins in such connection. Trollope
is but skilful photographer, not an artist
in any sense. Reade has no humor, and
Wilkie Collins is but first class police re-
porter. Each in his way has his merits; but
these merits do not belong to the higher
sphere of genius. Dickens successor on the
throne of English romance is a woman The
chronicler Of the midland homesteads,
the poet of the hedgerows,
''liberal homes of unmarketable
beauty" and the great corn stacks in the
rick-yard, the busy scenes of the shuttle and
the wheel, of the roaring furnace, of the shaft
and the pulley" that lie ''in the midst of the
large-spaced, slow-moving life of homesteads
and fsr-away cottages and oak-sheltered
parks, is the novelist of England who will
maintain the honor of current Anglo. Saxon
letters, to say nothing of their historic pres
tige, against Sue and Hugo and Auerbach.
There is no resisting, as there is no denying
the power of the author of adam Bede,
1.-The Mill on the Floss" and ''Romola.
Everybody recognizes the charm of 1.-THE
neat or handsome parsonage and grey church
set in the midst; the pleasant tinkle of the
blacksmithss anvil the patient cart-horses
waiting at his door; the basket-maker
peeling his willow wands in the sunshine;
the wheelwright putting the last touch to
a blue cart with red wheels; here and
there cottage with bright transparent
windows showing pots full of blooming bal
sans or geraniums, and little gardens in
front all double daisies or dark wall flowers;
at the we'll clean and comely women carry ing
yoked buckets, and towards the free school
small Britons dawdling on and handling their
marbles in the pockets of unpatched cordu-
rows adorned with brass buttons And in
contrast with these the dirty children and
languid mothers of the grimy towns-'pious
Dissenting women, perhaps, who took life
patiently and thought that salvation de-
pended chiefly on predestination and not at
all on cleanliness. The popular notion about
the excellence and brilliancy of the style
of George Elots novels is, that it is
simply the excellence of a painter like
Teniers. People talk of ''Silas Mariner" as
if there were nothing in it except Nancy
Lammeter and the famous meeting in the
parlor of the inn; of the ''Mill on the Floss"
as if it were only rural chronicle of Gleigs
and Dodsons and Tullivers; of "Adam Bede, v
as if it contained no more than a photo
graphic reproduction of the life of midland
diaries and farm houses and apple orchards.
But besides these wonderful pictures there is
a vast we'll of poetry, philosophy, and human
nature, of wit and pathos, of dramatic fire
and action, which remind us of the old mas
ters. George Eliot is the successor of Charles
Dickens. A woman stands to-day at the head
of English fictitious literature, the peer of
Tennyson and Mill, and greater than all
others. 4"