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[262] in Boston at a time when, as Browning himself told me, it attracted no attention in London; and Margaret Fuller wrote a notice of Paracelsus and Pippa Passes in the Dial, at a time when no such notice had yet appeared in Europe. If there was such a thing as literary foresight during the past century, its fountain was to be found in the New World, not the Old. In speaking of the soundness of the judgment of the American public, one cannot, of The Popular course, include the vast number of Verdict. people who read some sort of books. In this country the authors who have achieved the most astounding popular successes, are, as a rule, absolutely forgotten. I can remember when Sylvanus Cobb, Jr., received by far the largest salary yet paid to any American writer, and Dr. J. H. Robinson spent his life in trying to rival him. The vast evangelical constituency which now reads Ben Hur then read Ingraham's Prince of the house of David; the boys who now pore over Henty would then have had Mayne Reid. Those who enjoy Gunter would have then read, it is to be presumed, the writings of Mr. J. W. Buel, whose very name will be, to most
Boston, New York and Chicago. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1903.
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