This state of things is the more deplorable when we consider its effect, not merely in degrading and corrupting Literature on its productive side, but in detracting so seriously from its efficacy on its influential side. During the last few years the rapid spread of higher education, the popularization of liberal culture through such agencies as the University Extension Lectures, the National Home Reading Union and similar institutions have called into being an immense and constantly multiplying class of serious readers and students. These already number tens of thousands, they will before long number hundreds of thousands. Now it is of the utmost importance that these readers, who are quite prepared to appreciate what is excellent, should be guided to what is excellent, and discouraged in every way from conversing with what is bad and inferior in Literature. But how is this to be done when those who are striving, in every way, to raise the standard of popular taste and of popular culture, as teachers, find all their efforts counteracted by the intense activity of those who are doing their utmost to degrade both, as writers. It is only those engaged in education, and more particularly in popular education, who can understand the extent of the mischief which bookmakers and the puffers of bookmakers are doing, who can understand the tone, the taste, the temper induced by the habitual and exclusive perusal of the writings characteristic of these pests,--the inaccuracies and errors, the misrepresentations and absurdities, to which these writings give currency.