complete, and our room is limited.' In literature, on the contrary,
though its vehicles may seem as tightly packed, substitution can be
effected. There may be persons travelling on that line in the
first-class who ought to be in the third, and indeed have no reasonable
pretext for being there at all. And if clever Jack could show his
ticket, he would turn them out of it.

Again, so far from the space being limited, it is continually enlarging,
and that out of all proportion to those who have tickets. We hear from
its enemies that the Church is doomed, and from its friends that it is
in danger; there is a small but energetic party who are bent on reducing
the Army, and even on doing away with it; nay, so wicked and
presumptuous has human nature grown, that mutterings are heard and
menaces uttered against the delay and exactions of the Law itself;
whereas Literature has no foes, and is enlarging its boundaries in all
directions. It is all 'a-growing and a-blowing,' as the peripatetic
gardeners say of their plants; but, unlike their wares, it has its roots
deep in the soil and is an evergreen. Its promise is golden, and its
prospects are boundless for every class of writer.

In some excellent articles on Modern Literature in _Blackwood's
Magazine_ the other day, this subject was touched upon with respect to
fiction, and might well have filled a greater space, for the growth of
that description of literature of late years is simply marvellous.
Curiously enough, though France originated the _feuilleton_, it was from
America and our own colonies that England seems to have taken the idea
of publishing novels in newspapers. It was a common practice in
Australia long before we adopted it; and, what is also curious, it was
first acclimatised among us by our provincial papers. The custom is
rapidly gaining ground in London, but in the country there is now