social and economic problems. Although pure literature
has made considerable gains, the main achievement has been in other
directions. The audience of the literary 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, maybe, 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
manufacturers of books, periodicals, and newspapers for the young keep
the rising generation fully occupied, with a result to its taste and
mental fiber which, to say the least of it, must be regarded with some
apprehension. The "plant," in the way of money and writing industry
invested in the production of juvenile lit