Here is the position in the United States now about the criticism of such work. At about the time that the "North American Review" ceased to review books, there came, as if by general consent, an end to all elaborate criticism of new books here. I think myself that this is a thing very much to be regretted. In old times, whoever wrote a good book was tolerably sure that at least one competent person would study it and write down what he thought about it; and, from at least one point of view, an author had a prospect of knowing how his book struck other people. Now we have nothing but the hasty sketches, sometimes very good, which are written for the daily or weekly press. [Illustration: O. W. HOLMES'S SUMMER RESIDENCE AT BEVERLY FARMS.] So it happens that I, for one, have never seen any fit recognition of the gift which Doctor Holmes made to our time and to the next generation when he made his study of Emerson's life for the "American Men of Letters" series. Apparently he had not. Just think of it! Here is a poet, the head of our "Academy," so far as there is any such Academy, who is willing to devote a year of his life to telling you and me what Emerson was, from his own personal recollections of a near friend, whom he met as often as once a week, and talked with perhaps for hours at a time, and with whom he talked on literary and philosophical subjects. More than this, this poet has been willing to go through Emerson's books again, to re-read them as he had originally read them when they came out, and to make for you and me a careful analysis of all these books. He is one of five people in the country who are competent to tell what effect these books produced on the country as they appeared from time to time. And, being competent, he makes the time to tell us this thing. That is a sort of good fortune which, so far as I remember, has happened to nobody excepting Emerson. When John Milton died, there was nobody left who could have done such a thing; certainly nobody did do it, or tried to do it. I must say, I think it is rather hard that when such a gift as that has been given to the people of any country, that people, while boasting of its seventy millions of numbers, and its thousands of billions of acres, should not have one critical journal of which it is the business to say at length, and in detail, whether Doctor Holmes has done his duty well by the prophet, or whether, indeed, he has done it at all. [Illustration: O. W. HOLMES AND E. E. HALE. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN DOCTOR HOLMES'S STUDY, MAY 22, 1893.]