When this truth is recognized in the common schools, and literature is
given its proper place, not only for the development of the mind, but as
the most easily-opened door to history, art, science, general
intelligence, we shall see the taste of the reading public in the United
States undergo a mighty change: It will not care for the fiction it likes
at present, and which does little more than enfeeble its powers; and then
there can be no doubt that fiction will rise to supply the demand for
something better. When the trash does not sell, the trash will not be
produced, and those who are only capable of supplying the present demand
will perhaps find a more useful occupation. It will be again evident that
literature is not a trade, but an art requiring peculiar powers and
patient training. When people know how to read, authors will need to know
how to write.

In all other pursuits we carefully study the relation of supply to
demand. Why not in literature? Formerly, when readers were comparatively
few, and were of a class that had leisure and the opportunity of
cultivating the taste, books were generally written for this class, and
aimed at its real or supposed capacities. If the age was coarse in speech
or specially affected in manner, the books followed the lead given by the
demand; but, coarse or affected, they had the quality of art demanded by
the best existing cultivation. Naturally, when the art of reading is
acquired by the great mass of the people, whose taste has not been
cultivated, the supply for this increased demand will, more or less,
follow the level of its intelligence. After our civil war there was a
patriotic desire to commemorate the heroic sacrifices of our soldiers in
monuments, and the deeds of our great captains in statues. This noble
desire was not usually accompanied by artistic discrimination, and the
land is filled with monuments and statues which express the gratitude of
the people. The coming age may wish to replace them by images and