But the worst consequence of all is, the suspicion cast upon all offers from periodicals to really eminent writers, by the failure of editors, (through bad faith, or inability, or both,) to fulfil promises made to their contributors. Some of these cases are positively startling. In one instance a distinguished author was promised, _or given to understand, that he would have_ as much as one thousand dollars a-year. He wrote for two years steadily, and never received two cents. Another case occurred very recently. A comic or would-be-comic, periodical was started in imitation of _Punch_, and the proprietors offered ten dollars a page for all accepted articles. This they paid for a few weeks, and then, having secured on credit a supply for some time longer, deliberately broke their word, and would at this very time, if solvent, owe to a number of small litterateurs in New York, small sums of five and ten dollars. In this case, retribution was speedy, for the whole affair broke down in less than a year. We see, then, one great radical cause of inferiority in American periodical literature, affecting it in all its departments. But there are other influences which especially conspire to pervert and impede _criticism_. Some of these will be obvious, on referring back to our hints at the requisites for a critic. We said that he should be in the highest sense of the term a liberally educated man. Now this is what very few of the American periodical writers, professed or occasional, are. The popular object of education in the new world is to make men speak fluently and write readily about any thing and every thing--speaking and writing which, from their very fluency and readiness, tend to platitude and commonplace. Those studies which depend on and form a taste for verbal criticism, are pursued in a very slovenly and unsatisfactory manner; the penchant being for mathematics, from their supposed practical tendencies.[52] Men read much, but they do not "mark, learn, and inwardly digest." Their reading is chiefly of new books, a most uncritical style of reading, to which the words _reference_, _comparison_, _illustration_, are altogether foreign. Again, we said that our critic must not only be able to form, but ready to express his own opinion--in short, that he must be bold and independent. Now this is no easy or common thing in America, not so much from want of spirit and fear of the majority as from want of _habit_; the democratic influence moulding all minds to think alike. At the same time, it must be admitted that a spurious public opinion does often exercise a directly repressing influence. Cooper says, in his last novel, that the government of the United States ought to be called the _Gossipian_, and certainly Mrs Grundy is a very important estate in the republic. Then there are many powerful interests all ready to take offence and cry out. The strongest editor is afraid of some of these.