Let us now turn the picture and consider the other side
of it: let us transport ourselves into the midst of a
democracy, not unprepared by ancient traditions and present
culture to partake in the pleasures of the mind. Ranks are
there intermingled and confounded; knowledge and power
are both infinitely subdivided, and, if I may use the expression,
scattered on every side. Here then is a motley
multitude, whose intellectual wants are to be supplied. These
new votaries of the pleasures of the mind have not all
received the same education; they do not possess the same
degree of culture as their fathers, nor any resemblance to
them—nay, they perpetually differ from themselves, for they
live in a state of incessant change of place, feelings, and
fortunes. The mind of each member of the community is
therefore unattached to that of his fellow-citizens by
tradition or by common habits; and they have never had the
power, the inclination, nor the time to concert together. It
is however from the bosom of this heterogeneous and
agitated mass that authors spring; and from the same source
their profits and their fame are distributed.
I can without difficulty understand that, under these circumstances, I must expect to meet in the literature of such a people with but few of those strict conventional rules which are admitted by readers and by writers in aristocratic ages. If it should happen that the men of some one period were agreed upon any such rules, that would prove nothing for the following period; for, amongst democratic nations, each new generation is a new people. Amongst such nations, then, literature will not easily be subjected to strict rules, and it is impossible that any such rules should ever be permanent.
long and peacefully subject to a monarchical government. When liberty prevails in an aristocracy, the higher ranks are constantly obliged to make use of the lower classes; and when they use, they approach them. This frequently introduces something of a democratic spirit into an aristocratic community. There springs up, moreover, in a privileged body, governing with energy and an habitually bold policy, a taste for stir and excitement which must infallibly affect all literary performances.
