484 LITERATURE, ETC., IN 1878. 



LITERATURE, CONTINENTAL, IN 1878. 



all in one, by L . de Colange ; as well as " Mother 

 Goose Masquerades," " Shooting Stars, '^ by W. 

 L. Alden, and other provocatives of mirth. 



*A change has come over our periodical liter- 

 ature. With the exception of a few theologi- 

 cal publications or periodicals of interest to 

 other professions having regard to literature 

 alone the quarterly review may be said^ to 

 have disappeared. Those we had became first 

 bi-monthly, and are now monthly publications. 

 But the increased frequency of publication is 

 the smallest part of the change. A review 

 was once in fact is now, in Great Britain 

 the recognized organ of a party or school in 

 politics, religion, or philosophy. We know 

 what political doctrines will be favored by the 

 " Edinburgh," the " Quarterly," or the " West- 

 minster Review." But a review among us 

 now publishes the views of every party in turn, 

 or simultaneously, upon a given topic, each 

 writer being severally and solely responsible 

 for his own article. The word " symposium," 

 taken not in the classical but in a more intel- 

 lectual sense, as meaning a comparison of vari- 

 ant opinions on 'a topic of discussion, has be- 

 come a frequent feature of the review " of the 

 period." The review has become a magazine. 

 Some reviews, moreover, do little or no review- 

 ing, and the function of criticism is remitted 

 to daily, weekly, and fortnightly papers ; such 

 critical "notices" as the magazine includes 

 being in no essential respect superior to those 

 of first-class newspapers. The causes of this 

 change in the conduct and contents of our re- 

 views are not in every case, perhaps, the same, 

 but it is generally a symptom of changes in the 

 temper of thoughtful men. While party dis- 

 cipline and party watchwords are as constrain- 

 ing as ever upon what are called "practical" 

 politicians, thinking men and men of liberal 

 culture are but slightly affected by them. The 

 class of men needed to give by their ability and 

 knowledge the highest respectability to a peri- 

 odical, are the men who can not be sorted out 

 and labeled by party badges. Beliefs, both 

 political and religious, are more loosely held 

 than formerly. There are more open ques- 

 tions than were recognized a few years ago. 

 It seems not unnatural, at such a time, to see 

 in one periodical a subject looked at from sev- 

 eral distinct and opposite points of view. But 

 why do party reviews survive in Great Britain, 

 while here they are dying out? For one thing, 

 perhaps, because the literary class is larger 

 there than among us. There is room and pa- 

 tronage for the symposial by the side of the old- 

 fashioned reviews, and neither excludes the 

 other. Whether the present is a temporary 

 fashion in our periodical literature, or repre- 

 sents a tendency that is to go on indefinitely, 

 depends on the further question whether the 

 habits of mind out of which it arises are a tem- 

 porary phase of opinion and feeling, or some- 

 thing more permanent. But on this larger 

 question we forbear to vaticinate. 

 No one who is concerned for the future of 



American literature can regard with indiffer- 

 ence the question of international copyright. 

 Authorship among us will never do the work 

 or achieve the honors that are possible to it, 

 while defrauded of the rewards which are its 

 due by the necessity of competing with books 

 that need cost their publishers only the expense 

 of printing, binding, and selling. The connec- 

 tion between money, or the want of it, and lit- 

 erature, has been forcibly described by Mr. Glad- 

 stone. " In the train of this desire or need of 

 money," he says, '" comes haste with its long 

 train of evils summed up in the general scamp- 

 ing of work ; crude conception, slip-shod exe- 

 cution, the mean stint of labor, suppression of 

 the inconvenient, blazing of the insignificant, 

 neglect of causes, loss of proportion in the pres- 

 entation of results." Our leading publishers, 

 with a truly honorable feeling, have voluntari- 

 ly given to foreign authors some of the substan- 

 tial benefits of copyright; but, as there is no 

 law to secure themselves against competition, 

 they can not do the justice they would. It 

 can not be said that any observable progress 

 has been made toward the desired reform in 

 our copyright system. But discussion and 

 comparison of views are doing their work, and 

 there is less divergence of opinion. The inter- 

 ests of authors and publishers are more and 

 more seen to be identical, and we need not de- 

 spair of seeing the time when the interests of 

 readers shall no longer be supposed to be irrec- 

 oncilable with those of the producers of books. 

 Enlightened public opinion will denumd and 

 secure appropriate legislation. The British 

 Copyright Commission has reported in favor 

 of allowing copyright on all books first pub- 

 lished within the realm; and it would be as 

 useful to our own as just to foreign authors, 

 were the principle to be accepted by the United 

 States. The difficulty is, in the urgency of po- 

 litical debate, to get a hearing upon the ques- 

 tion. 



LITERATURE, CONTINENTAL, IN 1878. 

 A notable fact connected with the literature 

 of late years is the national activity in poetry, 

 in thought and historical research, and in a 

 lesser degree in science, developed among the 

 nations of the north, the east, and the south of 

 Europe, which have been used to receive their 

 mental nourishment from the great centers of 

 thought. The following report of the more 

 noteworthy literary productions of the year is 

 based on the annual review of the London 

 "Athenaeum": 



BELGIUM. A number of laborious memoirs 

 relating to the history of this country have ap- 

 peared during the year. King Leopold's prize 

 has been awarded to M. Alp. Wauters, for his 

 book entitled " Les LibertSs Communales," an 

 essay on their origin and early development in 

 Belgium, in the north of France, and on the 

 banks of the Rhine. Theod. Juste has related 

 the lives of three Belgian statesmen, Eugene 

 Defacqz, Joseph Forgeur, and Baron Liedts, 

 and has written an account of the revolution 



