nation passes from the former to the latter is not sudden but gradual,
and marked with shades of very various intensity. In the passage which
conducts a lettered people from the one to the other, there is almost
always a moment at which the literary genius of democratic nations has
its confluence with that of aristocracies, and both seek to establish
their joint sway over the human mind. Such epochs are transient, but
very brilliant: they are fertile without exuberance, and animated
without confusion. The French literature of the eighteenth century may
serve as an example.

I should say more than I mean if I were to assert that the literature of
a nation is always subordinate to its social condition and its political
constitution. I am aware that, independently of these causes, there
are several others which confer certain characteristics on literary
productions; but these appear to me to be the chief. The relations which
exist between the social and political condition of a people and the
genius of its authors are always very numerous: whoever knows the one is
never completely ignorant of the other.




Chapter XIV: The Trade Of Literature

Democracy not only infuses a taste for letters among the trading
classes, but introduces a trading spirit into literature. In
aristocracies, readers are fastidious and few in number; in democracies,
they are far more numerous and far less difficult to please. The
consequence is, that among aristocratic nations, no one can hope to
succeed without immense exertions, and that these exertions may bestow