artist has been less than that of the reporter of affairs and
discoveries and the special correspondent. The age is too busy, too
harassed, to have time for literature; and enjoyment of writings like
those of Irving depends upon leisure of mind. The mass of readers have
cared less for form than for novelty and news and the satisfying of a
recently awakened curiosity. This was inevitable in an era of
journalism, one marked by the marvelous results attained in the fields
of religion, science, and art, by the adoption of the comparative
method. Perhaps there is no better illustration of the vigor and
intellectual activity of the age than a living English writer, who has
traversed and illuminated almost every province of modern thought,
controversy, and scholarship; but who supposes that Mr. Gladstone has
added anything to permanent literature? He has been an immense force in
his own time, and his influence the next generation will still feel and
acknowledge, while it reads not the writings of Mr. Gladstone but may be
those of the author of "Henry Esmond" and the biographer of "Rab and his
Friends." De Quincey divides literature into two sorts, the literature
of power and the literature of knowledge. The latter is of necessity for
to-day only, and must be revised to-morrow. The definition has scarcely
De Quincey's usual verbal felicity, but we can apprehend the distinction
he intended to make.

It is to be noted also, and not with regard to Irving only, that the
attention of young and old readers has been so occupied and distracted
by the flood of new books, written with the single purpose of satisfying
the wants of the day, produced and distributed with marvelous cheapness
and facility that the standard works of approved literature remain for
the most part unread upon the shelves. Thirty years ago Irving was much
read in America by young people and his clear style helped to form a
good taste and correct literary habits. It is not so now. The