Even in the serious department of history we have recently seen numerous books from men notoriously unfit in point of judgment to inflict anything of the sort upon a confiding public. But money is offered as an inducement, pen and ink are cheap, type-writers are plentiful, so the work goes merrily on, and it may need all the wisdom of another generation to correct the mistakes which have been made in print by writers of the present time. Nevertheless, the steady demand which seems to be profitable to both authors and publishers is inciting the intelligent and educated class to efforts which once would have been impossible except to the very small number who were sufficiently well off to regard their literary work as a labor of love, and to expect no compensation except what might come from approving consciences. The modern novelist frequently gets more for a single volume than the elder Hawthorne received for all the books of his incomparable series. Literature has become a business as well as an intellectual occupation. Mr. Bancroft probably expended more money upon his well-known “History of the United States” than was received by those who sold his books at retail, but nowadays the writer of an alleged history can count upon as much pay for a hastily prepared book as a prominent lawyer would expect to receive for handling a case requiring long study and effort. These things being true--and authors and publishers will assure the public that they are--it is entirely safe to assume that we are soon to have a highly successful and valuable class of writers in the United States. “The coming book,” an expression which must soon go out of date, may be a history, a poem, a biography or a novel, but there will be so many more books than heretofore, that a work of great merit in any department of literature will possibly have to wait until another generation for proper recognition. There is so much to read that no book-worm can keep pace with the publishers’ presses. The last new novel may be very good or very bad, but whichever may be the case the general public stands very little chance of knowing, for before it has had time to reach the hands of many readers a dozen more have come from the press, and it is only chance or an exceptional degree of merit, which it is unfair to expect of any one more than once in a century, that will bring a book properly to notice.