It does not follow that everything written with earnestness and sincerity of purpose is worth attention. “Great minds think alike,” but not all great minds are properly educated, and we get an immense number of books, supposed by their authors to be original, whose contents are mere skeletons of what has been better expressed by some one else. The publisher often finds himself in the position of the patent office examiner. It is well known that at the patent office applications in large numbers are received every week for letters patent on supposed inventions which were made long ago by some one else, but of which the latest applicant was entirely ignorant. Men of thoughtful and inventive minds reproduce each other in every clime. There is not a savage tribe on the face of the earth which did not find out for itself the art of making cutting tools, building houses, constructing boats, cooking utensils and whatever else might be necessary to domestic life and its many necessities. The same holds in literature. Certain self-evident truths of philosophy or ethics, certain plots and situations in fiction, are common to all classes of people; and the consequence is that our literature is burdened with material of every kind, from the highest theology to the lowest sensation, which seems mere plagiarism on something which has preceded. Even Longfellow, who is nearer the American heart than any other of our poets, was persistently accused of plagiarism because he expressed thoughts and ideas which had been said as well, sometimes better, by older poets; yet Longfellow was supposed to be a man of wide reading.