uggle from the lower classes of society, towards the upper
regions and rewards of society, must ever continue. Strong men are
born there, who ought to stand elsewhere than there. The manifold,
inextricably complex, universal struggle of these constitutes, and
must constitute, what is called the progress of society. For Men of
Letters, as for all other sorts of men. How to regulate that struggle?
There is the whole question. To leave it as it is, at the mercy of
blind Chance; a whirl of distracted atoms, one cancelling the other;
one of the thousand arriving saved, nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine lost
by the way; your royal Johnson languishing inactive in garrets, or
harnessed to the yoke of Printer Cave; your Burns dying broken-hearted
as a Gauger; your Rousseau driven into mad exasperation, kindling
French Revolutions by his paradoxes: this, as we said, is clearly
enough the _worst_ regulation. The _best_, alas, is far from us!

And yet there can be no doubt but it is coming; advancing on us, as
yet hidden in the bosom of centuries: this is a prophecy one can risk.
For so soon as men get to discern the importance of a thing, they do
infallibly set about arranging it, facilitating, forwarding it; and
rest not till, in some approximate degree, they have accomplished
that. I say, of all Priesthoods, Aristocracies, Governing Classes at
present extant in the world, there is no class comparable for
importance to that Priesthood of the Writers of Books. This is a fact
which he who runs may read,--and draw inferences from. "Literature
will take care of itself," answered Mr Pitt, when applied-to for some
help for Burns. "Yes," adds Mr Southey, "it will take care of itself;
_and of you too_, if you do not look to it!"

The result to individual Men of Letters is not the momentous one; they
are but individuals, an infinitesimal fraction of the great body; they
can struggle on, and live or else die, as they have been wont. But it
deeply concerns the whole society, whether it will set its _light_ on
high places, to walk thereby; or trample it under foot, and scatter it
in all ways of wild waste (not without conflagration), as heretofore!
Light is the one thing wanted for the world. Put wisdom in the head of
the world, the world will fight its battle victoriously, and be the
best world man can make it. I call this anomaly of a disorganic
Literary Class the heart of all other anomalies, at once product and
parent; some good arrangement