nd, however great his
present fame, will most assuredly be forgotten with the passing away of
his generation. For does not _all_ human effort resolve itself into this
one thing? Is there any work which we call good or great, or even
important, which is not intended in some way to benefit mankind? Else we
were but butterflies, and our works but mists. In the past ages the
world has not seen and appreciated this fact; but the world of to-day
does appreciate it, and will certainly set every worker upon his proper
pedestal, high or low, according as his efforts have conduced or not to
the welfare of humanity.

Present reform in this particular is not to be looked for; it must be
external rather than internal. Could the whole mass of light literature
be at once and forever swept out of existence, the people would soon
acquire a love of solid reading as ardent as that which now pervades the
lower stratum of our society for 'yellow-covered' trash. For the love of
knowledge is innate, and the people would necessarily seek for and find
amusement in such reading as could not fail to instruct and educate, to
revive this love of knowledge, and fan it into an ardent flame. But this
cannot be done. The people will ever seek that reading which is most
congenial to their present tastes and habits, and there will ever be
found a legion of those who are eager to supply this sort of mental
pabulum--if it can be so called--for the sake of the golden equivalent.
For these reasons, the literature of the common people must ever follow,
not lead, their civilization; it must continue to be the outward and
visible sign of their progress, instead of the inward and spiritual
grace by which it is pervaded and sustained; and reform must be
inaugurated and consummated in those other influences which tend to
mould the moral man, and which must be so guided as to destroy all these
low and grovelling tastes, by lifting the man into a higher plane of
being, in which the animal shall be wholly subservient to the spiritual.
Hence the province of the true philanthropist lies in those other paths
which we have pointed out, rather than in this, since in them lies the
prospect of success whose _fruits_ will in this most clearly appear.

It is a significant fact that the foreign view points to but two blots
upon our society, and that foreign detractors harp continually upon
these, and these alone, as evidences of the backwardness of our
civilization--the insti