They manage, or, at any rate, they are beginning to manage these things better in America. That America is the country of the future is open to less doubt as a prophecy when the critic has made acquaintance with the new and renewed magazines now appearing in that country. A tone of provinciality still dominates a considerable part of the American literary Press, but it is obvious that tremendous efforts are being made to recover or, let us say, to discover centrality. American literary editors are more and more aiming to interest the world of readers rather than a mere province of them. I need scarcely say that the world of readers is not the same thing as a world of readers. A world of readers connotes large numbers, consisting chiefly of readers in search of amusement; but the world of readers consists of the few in every country who really read for their living, or rather, for their lives. To appeal to the latter class is to be “of the centre,” for the centre of every movement of life is not only the most vital, it is the smallest element, of the whole. The most recent American literary journals appear to me to be endeavouring to become organs for this class of reader. It is not indicated more plainly in the fact that they are enlisting European writers than in the fact that their American contributors are writing to be read in Europe as well as in America. America has begun to discover Europe. America is on the way to absorb Europe. In the course of a few generations, if the present American magazines may be taken as indicating direction, European writers will be as intelligible in America as in Europe; and, perhaps, more so.