listic
speculation or uneasiness, or is a special freak of sensationalism, the
novels which suit the greatest number of readers are those which move in
a plane of absolute mediocrity, and have the slightest claim to be
considered works of art. They represent the chromo stage of development.

They must be cheap. The almost universal habit of reading is a mark of
this age--nowhere else so conspicuous as in America; and considering the
training of this comparatively new reading public, it is natural that it
should insist upon cheapness of material, and that it should require
quality less than quantity. It is a note of our general intellectual
development that cheapness in literature is almost as much insisted on by
the rich as by the poor. The taste for a good book has not kept pace with
the taste for a good dinner, and multitudes who have commendable judgment
about the table would think it a piece of extravagance to pay as much for
a book as for a dinner, and would be ashamed to smoke a cigar that cost
less than a novel. Indeed, we seem to be as yet far away from the
appreciation of the truth that what we put into the mind is as important
to our well-being as what we put into the stomach.

No doubt there are more people capable of appreciating a good book, and
there are more good books read, in this age, than in any previous, though
the ratio of good judges to the number who read is less; but we are
considering the vast mass of the reading public and its tastes. I say its
tastes, and probably this is not unfair, although this traveling,
restless, reading public meekly takes, as in the case of the reading
selected in the newspapers, what is most persistently thrust upon its
attention by the great news agencies, which find it most profitable to
deal in that which is cheap and ephemeral. The houses which publish books
of merit are at a disadvantage with the distributing agencies.

Criticism which condemns the common-school system as a nurse of
superficiality, mediocrity, and conceit does not need serious attention,
any more than does the criticism that the universal opportunity of
individual welfare offered by a republic fails to make a perfect
government. But this is not saying that the common school does all that
it can do, and that its results answer to the theories about it. It must
be partly due to the want of proper training in the public schools that
there are so few readers of discrimination, and that the general ta