8 THE HT. HON. S. CAVE'S PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



their readers. But it is not universally so. The editor of au 

 American paper was once taken to task on account of a 

 violent anti-English article, and he was asked whether those 

 were his real sentiments. "No," replied he, "but my paper 

 costs a cent. I leave you to calculate how many subscribers 

 I must have to enable me to live. If I don't print what they 

 like, they wont buy the paper." 



"We must not be ungrateful to periodical literature, which 

 adds so much to our enjoyment, and has given a first start to 

 so many able writers ; but it somewhat encourages the ten- 

 dency to write for the present, and not for all time. The 

 difference between the two classes is well explained by Alfred 

 de Vigny, in Cinq Mars : " Les uns etaient des hommes obscurs, 

 fort illustres a present. Les autres des honmies illustres, fort 

 obscurs pour nous-posterite." 



It has been said that a well known poet suffered agonies of 

 self-reproach from the fear that even his remote descendants 

 might be injured by reading his works. And truly some of 

 our sensational novelists have much to answer for. Those I 

 mean whose heroes possess the proverbial qualifications for 

 mundane happiness, a good digestion, and no conscience. 

 Guardsmen of a type, we may believe, little known in the 

 Household Brigade, who "spare no man in their auger and 

 no woman in their licentiousness;" and, after a career of un- 

 mitigated villainy, settle down in patriarchal peace and 

 respectability. It is no light thing to invest such characters 

 with the halo of romance. We are but too inclined to sym- 

 pathize with reckless lawlessness. Has not some one said 

 that the most interesting character in Paradise Lost is Satan ? 

 But there are lower depths still. Scandalous publications, 

 striking at law and order through religion, of which the 

 Moderator of the General Assembly of Scotland has lately 

 spoken with becoming indignation. He calls them "infidel 

 and impure literature." But I will not so degrade the name. 

 They bear the same relation to literature that poison does to 

 food, and those who disseminate them are even worse than the 

 wretches who carried about infected straw for the purpose of 

 spreading the cattle-plague. 



To revert for one moment to the fine arts. Is there not some 

 danger that the patronage of the million may, while increasing 

 the quantity, somewhat lower the quality? Will not the 

 composer produce "tunes which jingle well"? and the artist 

 paint down to art union prizes ? Moreover there is that in 

 the relations between artists and certain London dealers, to 

 which I need only allude, but which, if not promptly stamped 



