pathological, total-abstinence; novels of travel, of adventure and
exploration; novels domestic, and the perpetual spawn of books called
novels of society. Not only is everything turned into a story, real or so
called, but there must be a story in everything. The stump-speaker holds
his audience by well-worn stories; the preacher wakes up his congregation
by a graphic narrative; and the Sunday-school teacher leads his children
into all goodness by the entertaining path of romance; we even had a
President who governed the country nearly by anecdotes. The result of
this universal demand for fiction is necessarily an enormous supply, and
as everybody writes, without reference to gifts, the product is mainly
trash, and trash of a deleterious sort; for bad art in literature is bad
morals. I am not sure but the so-called domestic, the diluted, the
"goody," namby-pamby, unrobust stories, which are so largely read by
school-girls, young ladies, and women, do more harm than the "knowing,"
audacious, wicked ones,--also, it is reported, read by them, and written
largely by their own sex. For minds enfeebled and relaxed by stories
lacking even intellectual fibre are in a poor condition to meet the
perils of life. This is not the place for discussing the stories written
for the young and for the Sunday-school. It seems impossible to check the
flow of them, now that so much capital is invested in this industry; but
I think that healthy public sentiment is beginning to recognize the truth
that the excessive reading of this class of literature by the young is
weakening to the mind, besides being a serious hindrance to study and to
attention to the literature that has substance.

In his account of the Romantic School in Germany, Heine says, "In the
breast of a nation's authors there always lies the image of its future,
and the critic who, with a knife of sufficient keenness, dissects a new
poet can easily prophesy, as from the entrails of a sacrificial animal,
what shape matters will assume in Germany." Now if all the poets and