It was while this not very admirable fooling was about at its height, that certain knights of the quill, no less adventurous in their enterprises than Dr. Livingstone was in his explorations through the wilds of Africa, established themselves in the commercial metropolis of America, and soon became the head of a power in the land scarcely second to that of the government. If not a new estate in government, this power became a new estate in society. There sprang up an entirely new literature; a literature which, as regularly as the sun, appeared every morning, and soon came to be, to all well informed persons, about as necessary as the sun is to the physical world. There was no subject too abstruse, none too sacred, none too high, and few too low for the essays of the brilliant, daring, dashing minds which about this time threw themselves into the arena of journalism. Not a few who had been distinguished in the literature of former days became journalists, and the most celebrated of American novelists, the illustrious author of the “Leatherstocking Tales,” finding himself too “slow” for the times, became incurably disgusted with men who cared little for venerable antiquity, and spoke of thrones and principalities, and powers, not to mention the writers of books, with all the sarcasm, wit, and irreverence of Junius and with infinitely more popular power. Here was, as we have said, a new literature. What difference was it that the individual essays were only for a day? Every day there were essays equally good, and they treated of political topics more fully and candidly than political topics had ever been discussed before by public journals, and they also treated of almost everything else under the sun. Every advance in science, every attempt at social or political reform, every humanitarian endeavor, every attack upon abuse and crime claimed to be hallowed by the lapse of time, every current event of importance of every kind, whether of fact or of idea, here in this wonderful kaleidescope could be seen, and then seen to give way to new spectacles of equal interest. Here the people were educated. There never has been discovered a means of education so powerful and so universal. It is, doubtless, owing to the fact that so many minds in America capable of creating a “permanent literature” devoted themselves to this potential means of influence, thereby losing their individuality but for the time being augmenting their power, that we have not yet produced an American Thackeray or even an American Dickens. In the formative era of what may well be called journalism proper, a very large proportion of existing genius has been called into such active use, in America, that it has not had leisure for books. And even in England, many of the most distinguished thinkers have served their regular terms as journalists.