How many books of this kind have been published, thrown aside, and forgotten, or consigned to the pastrycook and trunkmaker, since the “Songs of Selma” saw the light, is a question easier to ask than to solve. One thing is, though, certain--the number of people who will write, whether they have anything to say or not, increases every year, and in due course we may expect an ingenious Chancellor of the Exchequer to impose a tax on authors; which, after all, will hardly, so far as brilliancy is concerned, be so destructive as the window-tax, or so uncalled for as Mr Robert Lowe’s famous “ex luce lucellum” imposition. A couple of weeks later, in the same paper (January 18-20), is the following of a very different character from that which has been already selected:-- READING MACHINE IS removed from the Three Kings, Piccadilly, to the George Inn, Snow Hill, London; sets out from the _Broad Face, Reading_, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, at seven o’clock in the morning, and from the _George Inn, Snow Hill_, every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, at seven o’clock in the morning; carries passengers to and from Reading at 6s. each, children in lap, and outside passengers at 3s. Performed by {THOMAS MOORE and {RICHARD MAPLETON. _N.B._--Takes no charge of Writings, Money, Watches, or Jewels, unless entered and paid for as such. This machine was evidently a nondescript, partly slow coach, partly waggon, and was extremely reasonable in its rates if it journeyed at any pace, seeing that outside passengers paid no more than present Parliamentary rates, while the insides had no occasion to complain of excessive expenditure. But fancy the journey at seven o’clock on a January morning, with the knowledge that no brisk motion would keep the blood in circulation, that the roads were heavy, the weather indifferent, the society worse, the conversation, if any, very heavy, and the purse proportionally light! Such a company as Roderick Random and Strap fell in with in the waggon, must often have been seen on the outside of the Reading Machine. In the same paper of January 20-22, we find the advertisement of a pamphlet issued for the gratification of a morbid taste which has its representative nowadays--though, by the way, there is more excuse for a little excitement over murder and execution now than there was in the days when every week saw its batch of criminals led forth to take their final dance upon nothing:-- This day was published, price 1s.,