But if we return to our novels for our evidence of thespirit of

the times it becomes evident as one reads them in their

chronological order, so far as that is now ascertainable, that as

one comes to the latter nineteenth and the earlier twentieth

century the writers are much more acutely aware of secular change

than their predecessors were. The earlier novelists tried to show

'life as it is,' the latter showed life as it changes. More and

more of theircharacters are engaged in adaptation to change or

suffering from theeffects of world changes. And as we come up

to the time of the Last Wars, this newer conception of the

everyday life as a reaction to an accelerated development is

continually more manifest. Barnet's book, which has served us so

well, is frankly a picture of the world coming about like a ship

that sails into the wind. Our later novelists give a vast gallery

of individual conflicts in which old habits and customs,limited

ideas, ungenerous temperaments, and innate obsessions are pitted

against this great opening out of life that has happened to us.

They tell us of thefeelings of old people who have been wrenched

away from familiar surroundings, and how they have had to make

peace with uncomfortablecomforts and conveniences that are still

strange to them. They give us the discord between the opening

egotisms of youths and the ill-defined limitations of a changing

social life. They tell of the universal struggle ofjealousy to

capture and cripple oursouls, of romantic failures and tragical

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