Pacific railway. I use the ordinary classification,
Science and Art, though it is literature only of which I now aim to
speak. For under one of these two heads all literature must fall; it may
be either a contribution to science through its matter, or to art
through its form. The _form_ of literature is usually called _style_ and
of the highest kind of literature, called poetry or _belles-lettres_,
the style is an essential, and almost the essential part. It is in this
aspect that the matter is now to be considered,--literature as an art.

The latest French traveller, Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne, says well,
that, for what he calls the academic class--or class devoted to pure
literature--there is as yet no place in America. Such a class must
conceal itself, he says, beneath the politician's garb, or the
clergyman's cravat. We may observe that, when our people speak of
literature, they are very apt to mean a newspaper article, or perhaps a
sermon, or a legal plea. One editor said that it could be no more
asserted that literature was ill paid in America, since Governor Andrew
received ten thousand dollars for an argument against the prohibitory
liquor law. Even in our largest cities, there are scarcely the rudiments
of a literary class, apart from the newspapers. Now, journalism is an
invaluable outlet for the leisure time of a literary man; but his main
work must be given to something else, or his vocation must change its
name. He needs the experience of journalism, as he needs that of the
lyceum and the caucus,--nay, as he needs the gymnasium and the
wherry,--to keep himself healthy and sound. But when he gives the main
energy of his life to either, though he may not cease to be useful, he
ceases to be a literary man.

It is useless to complain that, in America, Science is preceding Art;
that is inevitable. As yet there is a shrinking even from pure
science,--that is, from all science which is not directly marketable;
and while this is so, art must be still further postponed. We have
hitherto valued science for its applications, natural history as a
branch of agriculture, mathematics for the sake of life-assurance
tables, and even a college education as a training for members of
Congress. Just so far as any of these departments have failed of these
ends, there is a tendency to disparage them. We are a little like the
President Dupaty of the French Assembly, who told the astronomer Laplace
that he considered the discov