got in; not so, however, with the Fairy Queen.  Beautiful it is indeed, most exquisitely and unapproachably beautiful in many passages, especially about ladies and ladies’ love more than celestial, for Venus loses in comparison her lustre in the sky; but still people were afraid to get into it then as now; and “heavenly Una, with her milk-white lamb,” lay buried in dust.  As to Shakspeare, we cannot find many traces of him in the domestic occupations of the English gentry during the times alluded to; nor do we believe that the character of Hamlet was at all relished in their halls, though perhaps an occasional squire chuckled at the humours of Sir John Falstaff.  We have Mr. Wordsworth’s authority for believing that Paradise Lost was a dead letter, and John Milton virtually anonymous.  We need say no more.  Books like these, huge heavy vols. lay with other lumber in the garrets and libraries.  As yet, Periodical Literature was not; and the art of printing seems long to have preceded the art of reading.  It did not occur to those generations that books were intended to be read by people in general, but only by the select few.  Whereas now, reading is not only one of the luxuries, but absolutely one of the necessaries of life, and we now no more think of going without our book than without our breakfast; lunch consists now of veal-pies and Venetian Bracelets—­we still dine on Roast-beef, but with it, instead of Yorkshire pudding, a Scotch novel—­Thomas Campbell and Thomas Moore sweeten tea for us—­and in “Course of Time” we sup on a Welsh rabbit and a Religious Poem.

We have not time—­how can we?—­to trace the history of the great revolution.  But a great revolution there has been, from nobody’s reading anything, to every body’s reading all things; and perhaps it began with that good old proser Richardson, the father of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison.  He seems to have been a sort of idiot, who had a strange insight into some parts of human nature, and a tolerable acquaintance with most parts of speech.  He set the public a-reading, and Fielding and Smollett shoved her on—­till the Minerva Press took her in hand—­and then—­the Periodicals.  But such Periodicals!  The Gentleman’s Magazine—­God bless it then, now, and for ever!—­the Monthly Review, the Critical and the British Critic!  The age had been for some years literary, and was now fast becoming periodical.  Magazines multiplied.  Arose in glory the Edinburgh, and then the Quarterly Review—­Maga, like a new sun, looked out from heaven—­from her golden urn a hundred satellites drew light—­and last of all, “the Planetary Five,” the Annuals, hung their lamps on high; other similar luminous bodies emerged from the clouds, till the whole circumference was bespangled, and astronomy became the favourite study with all ranks of people, from the King upon the throne to the meanest of his subjects.  Now, will any one presume to deny, that this has been a great change to the better, and that there is now something worth