ndencies of the
native population of the United States Mr. Bryce places 'a desire to be
abreast of the best thought and work of the world everywhere, and to
have every form of literature and art adequately represented and
excellent of its kind, so that America shall be felt to hold her own
among the nations.' And he further attributes to them 'an admiration for
literary or scientific eminence, an enthusiasm for anything that can be
called genius, with an over-readiness to discover it.'

Artistic talent in America has from an early period in the history of
the country enjoyed the stimulus of local respect and attention. Mr.
Henry James has testified to the 'extreme honour' in which writers and
artists have always been held there. Literature is now a subject of
special systematic study in all the important schools; literary
organisations are numerous, including no fewer than five thousand
circles for the study of Shakespeare; authorship has become something
like a craze in fashionable society; the intelligence of the criticism
in the weekly press is on the whole equal to that in English journals;
and several of the magazines are largely devoted to the more artistic
kinds of writing. If the results of these incentives to production seem
comparatively small, as they undoubtedly do, it must not be forgotten
that the profession of letters in America long suffered, and is still
suffering, from the absence of international copyright law. Before the
year 1891 the markets were filled with cheap reprints of British and
European works (often of an inferior class), and even now authors have
to encounter competition with a vast quantity of foreign matter of which
copyright, owing to the peculiar conditions of the law and of the
publishing trade, is often obtained at prices much below its real value.

It is not, however, the native literary product of America that is
noteworthy so much as the widespread and conscious taste for literature
among the people, and the means which they adopt to promote it. The
best friend of Australia could not credit it at present with any
markedly active desire 'to have every form of literature and art
adequately represented and excellent of its kind.' In this respect the
results of the high standard of education attained in the Government
schools and the subsidised Universities are disappointing. The
Universities of Sydney and Melbourne will soon be fifty years old, but
neither is yet represented with d