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 jority of English-speaking people the main avenue to the culture of the world, the literature of England has received the attention that it deserves. From childhood to old age we read English books. Furthermore, from the primary grades through the graduate school students examine English texts grammatically, historically, and critically—with some part of the seriousness which the ancient classics once commanded. American "classical" literature, however, remains for most of us a mere recreation when it does not become a fading recollection of our youth. In childhood we memorize bits of Longfellow and Lowell; we read Cooper and Poe and Hawthorne at the age when we are playing Indians. Perhaps in early adolescence we are helped by some aspiring high-school teacher through an essay of Emerson. But when we go to college, we put away our American classics as we put away our algebra and our Cæsar. Whatever taste and judgment in literary matters we attain are formed by English rather than American masters. We may carry into later life a certain affection for the native books that pleased our nonage; but we seldom subject them to critical scrutiny or test them with our disciplined powers of appreciation.

There was, of course, a period within the memory of our grandfathers when it was possible to exhaust the resources of an American library; and there are among our countrymen to-day persons of considerable cultivation who fancy that all the native books which are worthy of their atten-