With Macaulay and the trenchant articles in the Quarterly Review, the essay entered upon a more widely important career. It became the elaborate and interesting popularizer of knowl edge. It lost its brief form and its leisurely rambling ways. and assumed an avowedly critical and instructive attitude. Fortunately. Macau lay's manner of imparting his knowledge was as attractive and interesting as the know-ledge which he had to impart. His reviews, as those of his fellow-writers. were essays and not reviews. A new edition of Alilton, a new work on Machiavelli provided the opportunity for a popular but in clusive exposition of the England of the Protecto rate and the Italy of the Renaissance. The age of the magazine, Fraser's, Blackwood's, the Edin burgh Review, and others ushered in the age of the essay as we now know it. Carlyle's name should be added to the English list with special pleasure and with special regret. for Carlyle marks the furthest departure from the old sim plicity, courtesy, and grace; yet lie shows a strong individuality, which separates hint radi cally front the colorless expositors who now crowd the field of the essay. Worthy of mention.
finally. are Birrel, Crosse. Lang, Pater, Whilbey, Chesterton. and Saintsluiry.
In American essay-lite•ature Emerson is the greatest name. It is in the epigrammatic force of his essays that he is most nearly akin to his famous predecessors. We remember his sayings as we remember those of the Englishman and the Frenchman. Not. however, in his epigrams or in his anecdotes is Emerson of most importance in the history of the essay, but rather as instancing the high function to which this class of litera ture may attain. The most beautiful ethical teachings of a nation have been preserved to us in the form of essays. It with Lamb the public was but 'an enlarged circle of friends,' with Emer son the world was but an enlarged circle of brothers. Rush. Paulding, Hawthorne, Curtis, and Lowell are other deservedly treasured names. In German literature the essays of Les sing and Schlegel head the list, and there is also the fine work of Hermann Grimm, while France may think with most pride of Voltaire, Rousseau, Cousin, Lamartine, Sainte-Beuve, and Michelet.