ABSTRACT
There are various reasons why we hear less of literature than of the markets and the tariff and they are not all equally dishonorable. The business of literature, though it is incomplete without the interest the world takes in the matter, is carried on by the true student and author in quiet. Conscientiously pursued, there is no nobler labor than that of the man of letters who devotes his time and talents to the improvement of society through the press. He sacrifices, frequently, many of the higher honors of literature to his benevolence. In Literature itself, things appear, too, to have come to something like a crisis. Old literary hacks, like the coach hacks of London, according to John Randolph, smell villainously of dead bodies. American Literature, in the hands of these false defenders of mediocrity, reminds us of two passages in one of the works of Jean Paul.
