Politics, in all its forms, plays a smaller part in to-day's society than in that of fifty years ago. Not only has the South never regained its old ascendency at Washington, but it has not stood, and does not stand, for any distinct set of ideas or principles in the national life. It has clung closely together, under the influence of old sentiments and lingering apprehensions. In its fear of a recurrence of "negro domination," it has lost touch with the living questions of to-day and to-morrow. "The Solid South" has meant a secure contingent of electoral votes for the Democratic Presidential candidate,--whether he stood for a gold or a silver currency, for revenue reform or its opposite, for radicalism or conservatism,--and a solid array of members in Senate and House equally without pilotage on living issues. Until the South breaks away from its fetish of past fears and prejudices, it cannot rise to its proper opportunities of statesmanship. Yet better than the old-time absorption in Federal politics and the prizes of the Capitol is the more diversified life of the South to-day. It is being swept into the current of industrialism--with its energies, its prizes, its perils. In other directions, too, the new life of the South flows free and strong. It is creating a literature,--a branch of American literature,--incomparably beyond any product of its earlier days. After what may be called a literature of statesmanship,--the work of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Marshall,--the old South was almost wholly barren of original scholarship and creative genius. Now it bears a harvest so rich that one cannot here begin to classify or to name. The war-time is bearing an aftermath, of less importance in its romances, but admirable and delightful in its biographies and reminiscences. Of these the most notable feature, full as they are of vivid human interest and striking personal characteristics,--is the freedom from rancor, the generosity toward old foes which seems even unconscious of any necessity to forgive. And in these personal sketches there are disclosed certain broad yet distinct types of manhood and womanhood, the special Southern contributions to the composite American. In general literature, too, the South is doing its full share. In its histories, the note of provincialism still lingers,--inevitably, and not blamably. The Southern essayist or historian naturally gravitates to the past of his own section,--and naturally he seeks to vindicate his comrades or his ancestors, and to interpret the past from their standpoint. But, compared with the provincialism of the South of 1860, he is a cosmopolitan.