The advantages to be anticipated from the increase of the literary spirit in our public men are too numerous to be here set forth in detail. A few suggestions must suffice for our present purpose. In the first place, public men are experts, and have therefore valuable knowledge to impart. We are all well aware that General Grant knows important things about his battles which other men do not know. It is equally true that any clerk in a department, or any member of Congress has an intimate acquaintance with many concernments of considerable moment. A man who has served ten years in Congress could instruct and please us all if he had the art of describing the methods of law making. It is not a pleasant fact that the writing of a book on “Congressional Government,” which is at once philosophical and entertaining, should have been left to a college professor; nor is it pleasant to feel that the author of this book, Professor Woodrow Wilson, is probably the last man whom Baltimore will think of sending to Congress. The men who see the meaning of things and connect them with principles, and align them with historical precedents, are needed in Congress to give it dignity and character. In short, we ought to send our best men to Congress, and we are approaching an era when “best men” will generally be possessed of literary tastes and habits. Our public life is rich in materials for useful books and entertaining novels. Most of these materials lie neglected because we send inferior men to our public work. Another distinct advantage will be found in the preservation of many bright men whom we send to Congress from rusting out of intellectual brightness and becoming mere political workers. The majority of men sent to Congress are college men; they have had some literary tastes and habits. They have often been journalists. The public opinion which hedges them in converts them into office hunters and office peddlers, and consumes their lives in routine and political anxiety, to the detriment of all generous and aspiring manhood. The man whose brain work, in periodicals and books, will secure his position before his constituents, is a man saved.