e in considering the book of to-day in
connection with the book of to-morrow will be chiefly a negative one, in
making the book as it is, so far as we find it defective, our point of
departure in seeking the book as it ought to be.

To-day, for our present purposes, may be taken as beginning with the
great work of Morris. But its book includes the worst as well as the
best. It is not only the book by which we in our jealousy for the
reputation of our age should like to have our age remembered, but also
the more frequent book that we have to see and handle, however much
against our will, and sometimes even to buy. We may congratulate
ourselves that this book will perish by its own defects, leaving after
all only the best book to be associated with our age; but this does not
alter the fact that in the present the undesirable book is too much with
us, is vastly in the majority, is, in fact, the only book that the great
mass of our contemporaries know. How bad it is most book buyers do not
realize; if they did, a better book would speedily take its place. But,
until they do, our only chance of relief is the doubtful one of an
invention that shall make good books cheaper to make than poor ones, or
the difficult one of educating the public in the knowledge of what a
book should be. The latter is obviously our only rational hope; but
before we turn to consider it, let us first look at the book of to-day
to see exactly what it is.

The book of to-day is first of all a novel. It has other forms, to be
sure,--poetry, essays, history, travels, works of science and art,--but
these do not meet the eye of the multitude. We may disregard them for
the moment, and, in reply to the question, What is the book of to-day?
we may say: It is a one-volume novel, a rather clumsy duodecimo, with a
showy cover adorned with a colored picture of the heroine. It is printed
on thick paper of poor quality, with type too large for the page, and
ugly margins equal all around. Its binding is weak, often good for only
a dozen readings, though quite as lasting as the paper deserves. For
merits it can usually offer clear type, black ink, and good presswork.
But its great fault is that in addressing the buyer it appeals to the
primitive instinct for bigness rather than to the higher sense that
regards quality. Such is the book of to-day, emphatically what Franklin
over a hundred years ago called a "blown" book.

But though the novel fills the multitude's f