Harrison Ainsworth and Mr. A. Smith. For the magazine, as for his ordinary business, Mr. Bentley secured the aid of most of the writers who had graduated first under Colburn; and to enumerate them would, with the exception of “Father Prout,” be merely a repetition of names already mentioned, and those who have won popularity since then have scarcely yet had time to lose it. An amusing story, however, worth repeating, has been recently told by the _Athenæum_, anent “Eustace Conway,” a novel by the late Mr. Maurice. “We believe,” says that journal, “we are not going too far in telling the following story about it. Mr. Maurice sold the novel to the late Mr. Bentley somewhere about the year 1830; but the excitement caused by the Reform Bill being unfavourable to light literature, Mr. Bentley did not issue it till 1834, when he had quite lost sight of its author, then a curate in Warwickshire. The villain of the novel was called Captain Marryat; and Mr. Maurice, who first learned of the publication of his book from a review in our columns, had soon the pleasure of receiving a challenge from the celebrated Captain Marryat. Great was the latter’s astonishment on learning that the anonymous author of ‘Eustace Conway’ had never heard of the biographer of ‘Peter Simple,’ and, being in Holy Orders, was obliged to decline to indulge in a duel.” Mr. Bentley died in September, 1871, and was succeeded in the business by his son, who for many years had been associated with him. [Illustration] [Illustration] _THE RIVINGTONS, THE PARKERS, AND JAMES NISBET_: RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. Not only is the Rivington family the oldest still existing in bookselling annals, but even in itself it succeeded, a century and a half ago, to a business already remarkable for antiquity. In 1711, on the death of Richard Chiswell, styled by Dunton “the Metropolitan of booksellers,” his premises and his trade passed into the hands of Charles Rivington, and the sign of the “Bible and the Crown” was then first erected over the doorway of the house in Paternoster Row; and from that time to this the “Bible and the Crown” might have been fairly stamped upon the cover of nearly every book issued from the establishment, as a seal and token of its contents.