This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 Excerpt: ...Progress." him of Rousseau's "Confessions" without the objectionable features of that work. Ha- anybody remarked upon Herbert Spencer's extraordinary resemblance to his mother? Their faces differ only in being the faces of a woman and a man. Spencer's native strength of intellect is re fleeted in the broad brow, thoughtful eyes, and firm chin of his mother. He was evidently a mother's son, and anything he may have to tell us of her must be interesting. His only early storyis necessarily also the story of his family. He knew George Eliot before she was well known to the world, and his analysis or her gifts and character must rank as a real addition to literary history. From all one hears Spencer's single concern about his autobiography was this--that it should show him precisely as he was, " warts and all." One day we read that Scott has not the hold on readers he once had, another day that Dickens is losing his popularity, a third day that Thackeray is certainly on the "downgrade." It is best not to over much about such but to take it that Thackeray and Dickens and Scott go along very evenly from year to year. If we could get actual figures as to the number of their books sold, they would probably show a steady increase. There may, from time to time, be "fashions" in one great author or bother matters, another, but all the time the mass of readers, sent forth by the Board Schools, are reading the master novelists. A Scott or a Dickens they know, lesser people they do not know, and the result is inevitable and good. What the English Bible is in English literature we have been able to realise once more by figures brought out in connection with the centenary of the Bible Society. It has, in the hundred years, c...