Until recently Americans have had good grounds for complaining that their public servants were almost a minus quantity in literature. The complaint had an especially sharp edge in view of the fact that at an earlier period our Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, and others, had been among the foremost writers of the country; and it was still further aggravated by the contrast we seemed to present to France, England, and Germany, where a public man is usually also a literary man. The rule in France is that an eminent politician is an author, and the most distinguished statesmen and princes have written books. Even Louis Napoleon wrote a book on Cæsar, and one of the best accounts of our late war is the stately volumes of Count de Paris. In England, the rule is the same. The queen herself takes pride in the books she has produced. John Bright is almost alone in having no literary tastes, but his speeches will long survive in the volumes they will fill. Disraeli and Gladstone, Bulwer and Macaulay, Fawcett and Dilke, are only a few contemporary names in along list of distinguished statesmen who have excelled as writers for periodicals and as producers of books. In this country, from about 1830 to 1880, our public men wrote little. Benton’s “Thirty Years,” Webster’s speeches, and Sumner’s orations, and some other less famous works, do indeed redeem the half century; but when we have said all that can be said in praise of exceptions, the rule seems to have been that an American politician was not a writer, and a phrase of contempt attributed to an eminent Senator expresses the feelings of our politicians against “them literary fellers” in a form which is full of a significance from which we prefer to turn away our ears. Too many of our public men have despised literature, and justified literature in returning the sentiment with interest.