pression as new as the new feelings and new lives that come with every generation. The disaccordance between the expressions used by the writers of the past or of other regions and their own observations, makes old or distant literature not a vehicle for expression to our own people. With this only they become inexpressive, and from that point their mental and moral decline commences. Give our people a language and history that does not quite fit them to think in, and they do not think. They prefer the stimulus of sensation, and return to the basilar elements. I do not hesitate to refer much of the moral decadence of our Oregon poeple to this fact alone.
But once more, literature makes the future. Homer made Alexander; Vergil made the Roman papacy; Bryant and Whittier made the emancipators; Milton made modern England or, at least, the modern liberal England of Gladstone, "mewing her mighty youth." To whom imperial England of Joseph Chamberlain is indebted, I could not say; but an England of Browning is due before long all energy, all chivalry, all gentleness. If Oregon is to have a worthy future, it will first appear as a literary consciousness, uniting all elements of society that we have here, and charging the youth with an ideal to which they shall devote their lives. No one is going to make this for us; others are too busy in their own lot. It is for us to do, if it is done. Certainly we are not to depreciate what we have, nor overlook what is now progressing. We have not a few earnest writers and many earnest teachers. Our journalism is eminent and progressive; but what is made for the day passes with the day. We want something that will last at least a generation, as a vehicle of popular thought.
How to meet the want is the problem. We are accustomed to look upon truly vital literature as an inspiration, and not to be produced except by the chances of
