We have seen that his first purely humorous publication of this nature was the one which made him known to the general public.  It was speedily followed, however, by one of a somewhat graver character, which became at the time and has since remained a special favorite of cultivated readers.  This is the volume entitled “Backlog Studies.”  The attractiveness of this work is as much due to the suggestive social and literary discussions with which it abounds as to the delicate and refined humor with which the ideas are expressed.  Something of the same characteristics was displayed in the two little volumes of short pieces dealing with social topics, which came out later under the respective titles of “As We Were Saying,” and “As We Go.”  But there was a deeper and more serious side of his nature which found utterance in several of his essays, particularly in some which were given in the form of addresses delivered at various institutions of learning.  They exhibit the charm which belongs to all his writings; but his feelings were too profoundly interested in the subjects considered to allow him to give more than occasional play to his humor.  Essays contained in such a volume, for instance, as “The Relation of Literature to Life” will not appeal to him whose main object in reading is amusement.  Into them Warner put his deepest and most earnest convictions.  The subject from which the book just mentioned derived its title lay near to his heart.  No one felt more strongly than he the importance of art of all kinds, but especially of literary art, for the uplifting of a nation.  No one saw more distinctly the absolute necessity of its fullest recognition in a moneymaking age and in a money-making land, if the spread of the dry rot of moral deterioration were to be prevented.  The ampler horizon it presented, the loftier ideals it set up, the counteracting agency it supplied to the sordidness of motive and act which, left unchecked, was certain to overwhelm the national spirit—­all these were enforced by him again and again with clearness and effectiveness.  His essays of this kind will never be popular in the sense in which are his other writings.  But no thoughtful man will rise up from reading them without having gained a vivid conception of the part which literature plays in the life of even the humblest, and without a deeper conviction of its necessity to any healthy development of the character of a people.

During the early part of his purely literary career a large proportion of Warner’s collected writings, which then appeared, were first published in the Atlantic Monthly.  But about fourteen years before his death he became closely connected with Harper’s Magazine.  From May, 1886, to March, 1892, he conducted the Editor’s Drawer of that periodical.  The month following this last date he succeeded William Dean Howells as the contributor of the Editor’s Study.  This position he held until July, 1898.  The scope of this department was largely expanded after the