When the element of prejudice is entirely withdrawn, we have next to bear in mind the fluctuations of taste in respect to popular favourites, and the uncertainty that what has pleased us may ever contrive to please the world again. I have been reminded of the insecurity of contemporary judgments, and of the process of natural selection which goes on imperceptibly in criticism, by referring to a compendium of literature published thirty years ago, and remarkable in its own time for knowledge, acumen, and candour. In these volumes the late Robert Carruthers, an excellent scholar in his day and generation, gives a certain space to the department of American poetry. It is amusing to think how differently a man of Carruthers's stamp would cover the same ground to-day. He gives great prominence to Halleck and Bryant, he treats Longfellow and Poe not inadequately, he spares brief commendation to Willis and Holmes, and a bare mention to Dana and Emerson (as a poet). He alludes to no one else; and apart from his omissions, which are significant enough, nothing can be more curious than his giving equal _status_ respectively to Halleck and Bryant, to Willis and Holmes, to Dana and Emerson. Thirty years have passed, and each of these pairs contains one who has been taken and one who has been left. Bryant, Holmes, and Emerson exist, and were never more prominent than to-day; but where are Halleck, Willis, and Dana? Under the microscope of Mr. Stedman, these latter three together occupy but half of one page out of four hundred, nor is there the slightest chance that these writers will ever recover the prominence which they held, and seemed to hold so securely, little more than a generation ago. The moral is too obvious to need appending to this suggestive little story.